among them General Motors' truck division, and the aforementioned General Vehicle division of General Electric, which claimed to have almost 2,000 operating vehicles in the metropolitan region. When opening their flagship department store, Lord and Taylor boasted of its electric vehicle fleet – numbering 38 trucks – and the conveyor system to efficiently load and unload goods. 1920s–1950s After enjoying success at the beginning of the 20th century, the electric car began to lose its position in the automobile market. A number of developments contributed to this situation. By the 1920s an improved road infrastructure improved travel times, creating a need for vehicles with a greater range than that offered by electric cars. Worldwide discoveries of large petroleum reserves led to the wide availability of affordable gasoline, making gas-powered cars cheaper to operate over long distances. Electric cars were limited to urban use by their slow speed (no more than 24–32 km/h or 15–20 mph) and low range (50–65 km or 30–40 miles), and gasoline cars were now able to travel farther and faster than equivalent electrics. Gasoline cars also overcame much of their negatives compared to electrics, in several areas. Whereas ICE cars originally had to be hand-cranked to start – a difficult and sometimes dangerous activity – the invention of the electric starter by Charles Kettering in 1912 eliminated the need of a hand starting crank. Further, while gasoline engines are inherently noisier than electric motors, the invention of the muffler by Milton O. Reeves and Marshall T. Reeves in 1897 significantly reduced the noise to tolerable levels. Finally, the initiation of mass production of gas-powered vehicles by Henry Ford brought their price down. By contrast, the price of similar electric vehicles continued to rise; by 1912, an electric car sold for almost double the price of a gasoline car. Most electric car makers stopped production at some point in the 1910s. Electric vehicles became popular for certain applications where their limited range did not pose major problems. Forklift trucks were electrically powered when they were introduced by Yale in 1923. In Europe, especially the United Kingdom, milk floats were powered by electricity, and for most of the 20th century the majority of the world's battery electric road vehicles were British milk floats. Electric golf carts were produced by Lektro as early as 1954. By the 1920s, the early heyday of electric cars had passed, and a decade