Alastair Carter, the electric car pioneer with his Coaster

“A silent, fumeless, commuter shopping car is one of the main developments we can expect from the industry in the next few years.”

At the 1967 show, Ford showed off a prototype of its two-seat electric car called the Comuta (above), and the British Motor Corporation announced it would be building an electric town car – designed by Alec Issiogonis who had created the Mini and styled by Pininfarina of Italy renowned for their work with Ferrari – within two years.

The Express said: “Now the race is on to get the rival electric cars into production and onto the road. At present Mr Carter is furthest ahead. He plans to have his car in production by the end of the year and on sale within 12 months, but it has only a 50 mile range.”

Alastair Carter was born in 1916 into a farming family at Castle Hills, on the edge of Northallerton, where his nephew, Stuart Baker, still has the family scrapbook which shows Alastair’s remarkable range of interests.

Alastair Carter is second from the left on the back row of this Second World War RAF photograph - he was in the Royal Observer Corps and then became a bomber pilot

He left East Road School at 14, but continued with nightclasses in scientific subjects, and when the Second World War broke out, he joined the Royal Observer Corps where his extraordinary ability to identify aircraft was noted. He then became an RAF bomber pilot.

In peacetime, in 1948, he was the youngest person elected to Northallerton Urban District Council where he began “top level talks” with British Rail over eliminating the four level crossings which were closed for four minutes in every 12, causing huge snarl-ups. His redesign of the lines, though, was rejected by BR because it would have cost £400,000 – and 75 years later, Northallerton still grinds to a halt when the barriers come down.

In 1953, as deputy leader of the council, he chaired the Coronation Committee which ran a weeklong series of events – torchlight processions, fireworks, street parties and inscribed silver spoons given to the two babies born in the town on June 2 (are the spoons still in existence?). He was pictured in the papers releasing pigeons bearing messages of coronation goodwill – he was a keen fancier and in those days, when a pigeon dropped into its loft at the end of a race, its owner had to rush to the central hub to record its arrival. So keen on getting the best possible time for his birds was Mr Carter that he bought a racing bicycle so he could speed through the streets while others were only running.

He would have become council leader the following year but he had had enough of farming and got a position as an engineer with Abelson’s in Birmingham, where he specialised in tipper trucks and container lorries.

One of Alastair Carter's innovative car transporter, which he named a "carveyor"

In 1959, he set up his own company, Carter Engineering, in Tamworth where he developed the “carveyor” – car transporters that lifted vehicles up their electric ramp so at first eight, then ten and then 12 vehicles could be driven the length of the country by one driver. He won five High Court cases to prove the safety of his designs and by the mid-1960s, 70 per cent of transporters in Britain were made by Carter.

A drawing of the Carter Coaster showing its battery under the bonnet and the revolutionary engines in the rear wheels

Then he moved onto his electric vehicle, the Carter Coaster. He revealed its unique feature at the 1967 Motor Show. “The secret of a new car is the combined engine and brake system which fits within the hub of each wheel,” said the Daily Express.

Whereas Ford’s Comuta only held two people and cost £300 to £400, Mr Carter’s Coaster carried four on a bench seat and cost £300. It was to have four 12 volt batteries, and was 5ft 3ins wide and 8ft 6ins long, and 60 miles cost just three shillings to cover.

And so the race was on to break open the massive electric car market.

“Within five years, I expect to see about 250,000 on the roads of Britain,” said Alastair in another interview after the Motor Show. “A silent, fumeless, commuter shopping car is one of the main developments we can expect from the industry in the next few years.”

Alastair Carter with the only Coaster ever built

But Mr Carter had pinned his plans on a new form of plastic, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), made by the Borg-Warner Corporation of the US. Today, Lego bricks are made out of ABS along with some car panels and dashboards.

The big automotive companies of the US, led by Ford, put pressure on Borg-Warner not to help the small Carter Coaster steal a march by going into production first. Mr Carter testified three times to the Senate’s Anti-Trust Commission about these apparently unlawful business practices but to no avail.

Alastair Carter at his desk with a model of the Carter Coaster on his pad

Unable to build his Coaster, he parked his idea in a lay-by, although his unique concept of armature inside a wheel to provide electric energy, and of “regenerative braking” whereby the energy released when the car was slowed recharged the battery, was not wasted by the Americans. They turned it into the golf buggy.

As Ford couldn’t get its Comuta to market, the lights went out on the electric vehicle concept, and they were not turned back on again for another generation.

Alastair and Win Carter on their wedding day

In 1973, Mr Carter sold his carveyor company to Crane Fruehauf, the biggest car transporter builder in Europe, and retired with his wife, Win, a former teacher at Allertonshire Girls’ School, to Alderney in the Channel Islands.

But he never lost contact with his family and friends in Northallerton. He led a movement in the 1960s for businessmen to have their own small planes – he reckoned his £6,000 Rallye Commodore cost 8d-a-mile to operate whereas his Hillman Hunter worked out as 9d-a-mile. And in the air he – and often Win – avoided all the tailbacks.

Alastair and Win Carter in their plane in a field off Stokesley Road, Northallerton, as they regularly flew into the town to visit relatives

Their plane was a regular sight landing at the farm of his brother-in-law, Jack Gibson, at Bank House on the Stokesley Road as Win dropped in on her sister.

When died on Alderney in 1993, aged 73, a thanksgiving service was held back at the United Reformed Church in Northallerton.

He never lost his faith in his bright ideas. He wrote to the D&S Times on several occasions urging Northallertonians to revive his rail plan to bypass the level crossings, and he always knew the electric vehicles were the future.

In an interview after the sale of Carter Engineering to the Germans, he said: “There will be nothing but electric powered transport in the future.

“I forecast that in 10 years, plans will be afoot to convert motorways to electric train railways. The motorways will not be needed for cars and the steady gradient and ready-made bridges make them a cheap site for railway building.”

Then he added: “I think the wind blowing over the earth could be the answer to the world energy crisis. And one day perhaps instead of television aerials, people will have windmills on their roofs.”

• With thanks to Caroline and Stuart Baker, and Ken Megginson