Who designed and built the first hybrid car?

Porsche's hybrid used an internal combustion engine that ran at a constant speed to turn a generator and charge the vehicle's batteries [source: Wand]. These batteries then sent electricity to motors located in the hub of the wheels. When fully charged, Porsche's hybrid allowed the vehicle to travel almost 40 miles (64.3 kilometers) [source: Hybrid Cars]. The vehicle was ahead of its time, not only as the first gas-electric hybrid, but also because it was one of the earliest examples of in-wheel motor power.

Similar to current in-wheel motor technology, Porsche's hub motors eliminated the need for a gearbox, drive shafts or chains and a clutch, which eliminated a substantial amount of mechanical friction and allowed the vehicle to use 83 percent of the energy it produced [source: Wand]. A few years later, Porsche added hub motors to all four wheels, which increased the amount of power the car had and allowed it to reach a top speed of 70 mph (112.6 kilometers per hour) [source: Wand].

Although Porsche's hybrid was the first to be designed and built, a German inventor named Henri Pieper applied for a U.S. patent on his hybrid in 1905 and received it in 1909 [Source: Hybrid Cars]. Pieper's design was similar to that of many of today's hybrids, using both the gasoline engine and the electric motor to power the vehicle when needed.

Pieper's design is very similar to the parallel hybrid system used in the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight [Source: Hybrid Cars]. A parallel system uses both the electric motor and the gasoline engine to provide power to the wheels [Source: Hybrid Center]. When the engine doesn't need assistance from the electric motor, the motor acts as a generator to help recharge the batteries, but when the vehicle needs extra power (when driving up a steep hill, for example), the electric motor acts in concert with the engine to provide power to the wheels [Source: Hybrid Center].

Now that we know who built the first hybrid vehicle and have learned about another early hybrid design, let's go onto the next page and find out why hybrid cars didn't become the primary system of choice for automobile consumers and how later developments brought the hybrid to center stage.

A poll was taken at the first National Automobile Show in New York City in 1900 to see what type of vehicle the attendees preferred. The top answer was electric vehicles, followed closely by steam-powered cars. Internal combustion engines came in last [Source: Hybrid Cars]. Thousands of hybrid vehicles were being produced around this time, but that type of car production began to slow down when Henry Ford introduced the automobile assembly line [Source: Hybrid Cars].

Ford's assembly line produced lightweight and inexpensive cars that appealed to the general public [Source: Hybrid Cars]. In 1913, Ford sold 182,809 Model Ts, while sales of cars that didn't run exclusively on gasoline began drop steadily [Source: Hybrid Cars].

It wasn't until the late 1960s and early 1970s that automobile companies and scientists began experimenting with hybrid vehicles again [Source: Hybrid Cars]. When an oil embargo hit the United States in the early 1970s, the Department of Energy began testing several types of alternative car technologies. One type was a parallel hybrid car created by Volkswagen called the VW Taxi, which could switch from an internal combustion engine powered by gasoline to electric power [Source: Hybrid Cars].

Over the next several decades, car companies experimented with alternative technologies. In 1999, Honda sold the first mass-market hybrid in the United States, called the Insight [Source: Hybrid Cars]. One year later, Toyota introduced the Prius, which won the Car of the Year award from Motor Trend Magazine in 2004. Although these two vehicles use the parallel hybrid system, Porsche's series parallel system is still used in hybrids today.

It took almost one hundred years for automakers to mass-produce hybrid vehicles in America; meanwhile, battery technology, engine efficiency and electrical systems have improved, allowing even greater opportunity for the future hybrid vehicles.

For more information about hybrid cars and how they work, go on to the next page.