When talking about great automobile inventors, one remarkable event is often forgotten. Namely, how in 1901 the world's first hybrid car appeared. Moreover, not from “anyone”, but from Ferdinand Porsche himself. There were still 30 years left before the Porsche design office appeared.
Ferdinand Porsche has been busy with the idea of a revolutionary electric car since 1898. Moreover, from the very beginning, a machine was developed not only capable of moving on electric traction, but also ready to be successfully sold. Two years of work brought excellent results, noted at the 1900 Paris Motor Show. The only thing that did not suit Ferdinand was that the car was too heavy.
The first hybrid!
At the same time, the Austrian company Lohner approached the young inventor with a proposal to modify his car. This partnership gave birth to the first hybrid propulsion system using a pair of water-cooled De Dion-Bouton single-cylinder 3.5 hp engines. each, for the rotation of two generators, each of which provided a current of 20 A at a voltage of 90 V. Two electric motors built into the front wheels were powered by lead-acid batteries, which store electricity from the generators. Complicated? But it worked!
Lohner-Porsche 1901
In operation, the "Lohner-Porsche" car (or as it is sometimes called "Mixte-Wagen") was more convenient: better controlled, more economical … With a mass of 1.2 tons, the autonomy of the course was 200 km. According to some reports, about two hundred of these "hybrids" were collected, but none have survived to this day. Moreover, only a few photos and a very small part of the drawings have come down to us from this car.
Lohner-Porsche 1902 Ferdinand Porsche is driving.
Unfortunately, Ferdinand Porsche fell out with Lohner in 1906 over patents, and the story of this wonderful car ended there. But who knows how the history of the automotive industry would have turned if they had continued their cooperation.
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Luxurious reconstruction. "Semper Vivus" 2011.
A century later, Porsche Engineering engineers worked with Drescher to assemble a Semper Vivus, using surviving data that matched the original Lohner-Porsche, displayed at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show, and then deposited at the Vienna Technical Museum.