The History Of The Hybrid Car
Just where did a hybrid car get it’s beginnings? Well, read on to find out. Hybrid cars are very popular to 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 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 complex. Simple was all he wanted.
So it was that Ferdinand designed a car that would have four wheels and would run on steam. It took roughly fifteen years of sweat and toil 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 passed into reality.
Then in 1769, a man with the name of Nicholas Cugnot designed and developed a carriage that was powered by steam. This carriage really did go and it went at six miles per hour. This project was all well and good, but it was difficult to get the amount of steam needed to make the car to go any significant distance.
The real break through in hybrid vehicle design finally came in 1839 when Robert Anderson developed an electrically powered vehicle. It was the first of its breed and was built in Scotland.
This electric car was a highly applauded innovation of its time. However, the only problem was that it was very difficult to recharge the car’s battery. Some pioneers came after Anderson, but they too had a hard time getting the battery recharged easily.
Then there was another outstanding break-through, in the year 1898, Porsche came out with an electric and fuel combo combustion engine that was the first of its type. The car was named the Lohner Electric Chaise and it could go for up to 40 miles using just its batteries.
Within a short space of time, pioneers combined both gas and a battery powered engines to power what would become today’s hybrid vehicle. In 1999, Honda made a leap into the US market. It came out with the Honda Insight, which was a lightweight two-door hybrid. Since then, hybrid cars have been evolving and improving into what we see on the market these days. Hybrid cars are no longer just for the techies who think it’s cool to combine battery and fuel power to get them where they need to go. Hybrid cars started out simple, and they are still quite simple today.
Nowadays hybrid vehicles 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.
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