The History Of The Hybrid Vehicle

Just where did a hybrid car get it’s start? Well, read on to find out. Hybrid cars are very popular for today’s car buyers, and there are many reasons why. But before you even think about choosing a hybrid car to buy, you might want to know a little bit about the history of the hybrid car first.

It is surprising, but hybrid vehicles were around even before gas-powered cars. In or about the year 1665, a Jesuit priest by the name of Ferdinand Verbeist started making plans for a new type of vehicle. That vehicle or cart would be very simple, nothing intricate. Dead simple was all he was interested in.

So it was that Ferdinand designed a car that would have four wheels and would run on steam. It took roughly fifteen years of work for Ferdinand to go through with his plan. He laboured to perfect his dream car. But no one knows for certain if he ever finished it because there is no physical evidence that his concept ever came into reality.

Then in 1769, a man by the name of Nicholas Cugnot designed and developed a carriage that was driven by steam. This vehicle really did go and it went at six miles per hour. This project was great, but it was difficult to get the amount of steam needed to make the car to travel any significant distance.

The real break through in hybrid vehicle design finally came in 1839 when Robert Anderson developed an electrically powered car. It was the first of its kind and was built in Scotland.

This type of electric car was a highly applauded innovation of its time. But, the only problem was that it was very difficult to recharge the car’s battery. Some pioneers did come after Anderson, but they had the same problem of getting the battery recharged after a few miles.

Finally in the year 1898 Porsche produced an electric and fuel combustion engine that was the first of its time. The car was called the Lohner Electric Chaise, and it could go up to 40 miles just using batteries.

Not long afterwards, pioneers combined both gas and a battery powered engines to power what would turn into today’s hybrid vehicle. In 1999, Honda made its jump into the US market. It came out with the Honda Insight, which was a lightweight two-door hybrid vehicle. Since then, hybrid cars have been evolving and improving into what we see on the roads these days. Hybrid cars are no longer just for the techies who think it’s cool to combine battery and liquid fuel to get them where they want to go. Hybrid cars began life simple, and they still are quite simple today.

Nowadays hybrid cars are becoming increasingly more popular as people are getting to understand them better. In the 21st century, hybrids saw a big boom in sales after the Toyota Prius came on the streets. It was the first hybrid with four doors that was marketed for America.

Soon after, the Ford Escape hybrid became the very first SUV hybrid ever made. So there it is in a nutshell, the history of the hybrid car – today’s modern car.