The History Of The Hybrid Car

Just where did a hybrid car get it's start? Read on to find out. Hybrid cars are very popular to today's car buyers and there are many reasons why that should be. But before you even think about picking which hybrid car to buy, you might want to know a little about the history of the hybrid first.

It is surprising, but hybrid vehicles were invented 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 about fifteen years of work for Ferdinand to go through with his plan. He worked|laboured to perfect his dream car. But no one knows for certain if he ever finished it because there is no evidence that his concept ever came into existence.

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 work and it went at six miles per hour. This project was great, but it was difficult to get the amount of steam needed to allow the car to go any significant distance.

A break through in hybrid car design finally came when Robert Anderson developed an electrically powered car in 1839. It was the first of its breed 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 hard 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.

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 kind. The car was named the Lohner Electric Chaise and it could go for up to 40 miles using only its batteries.

Soon, pioneers combined both gas and a battery powered engines to power what would become 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. Since then, hybrid cars have been evolving and improving into what we see on the market today. Hybrid cars are no longer just for the techies who think it's nice to combine battery and fuel power to get them where they want to go. Hybrid cars started out simple, and they are still quite simple today.

These days 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 in the USA.

Then, Ford's Escape hybrid became the very first SUV hybrid ever made. So there, you have it, the history of the hybrid vehicle, today's modern car.

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