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Inventors had tinkered with battery-run cars since the 1840s, but the golden era, and the struggle for dominance between gas- and electric-powered cars, had begun in earnest on June 11, 1895. That was when twenty-two horseless carriages set off from Versailles along France's poplar-bordered Route Nationale, headed from Paris to Bordeaux and back, for a widely publicized round-trip race of more than 700 miles. Most were fuled by gasoline, a few by steam, two by lead-acid batteries. Charles Jeantaud, a Parisian carriage maker, drove an electric powered surrey all the way to Bordeaux, exchanging battery packs along the way at prearranged stops; had he not suffered a hot rear bearing, he might have finished the course. Camille Jentzy's bullet-shaped "La Jamais Contente" took an early lead at 65 miles per hour, but discharged its batteries in less than an hour ... the winning car, gasoline fueled, rolled to the finish line in 48 hours and 48 minutes, having traveled at an average speed of 14.4 miles per hour.