PORSCHE BEAT PRIUS BY 96 YEARS
It’s only the fortunate few who can drive an electrified Porsche. But looking at things logically, EV or hybrid Porsches should outnumber Toyota Priuses by now.
Ferdinand Porsche is responsible for the world’s first hybrid production vehicle.
He created the Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus (“always alive”) prototype in 1900, which featured electric wheel-hub motors at the front. That evolved into a production version with motors on all four wheels, the LohnerPorsche Mixte (1901-15).
Jacob Lohner reckoned the time was right for electric vehicles because the air was “ruthlessly spoiled by the large number of petrol engines in use”. That’s some forward thinking right there.
The Mixte combined the hub motors (up to 5.2kW each for short bursts) with lead-acid batteries and a petrol generator. It was a
revolutionary machine, but not without its issues: the combined weight of the batteries, motors and platform was over four tonnes, and it was extremely expensive — about twice as much as a comparable petrol car.
It stayed in production for a long time but the Mixte will still be remembered as a commercial failure. The high price still did not allow Lohner to recoup its development costs and the technology was not pursued further for cars — although it was adapted for large commercial vehicles.
Porsche built a replica of the Semper Vivus in 2011, to celebrate its electric heritage as it launched hybrid versions of its Cayenne and Panamera models for the first time.