A very strange vehicle

Anybody with the mildest interest in the history of the technology of transportation, the history of advertising, or the history of Canada should go look at this very very strange vehicle from 1905. (The Shorpy’s photoblog is quite a treasure trove, but this particular one is exceptional.)

You can click on the picture to massively embiggen in case you want to try to figure out whether that thing is steam powered or not or what the weird black box is under the chassis in front of the things that might be batteries with all the little U-shaped handles on it.