Early Hybrid Car by Ferdinand Porsche

The historical road traveled by hybrid powered cars is much longer than many of today’s buyers imagine. There are also other myths and beliefs about these types of vehicles.

One is the idea that hybrid cars are a new phenomenon. This is, in fact, a myth.  In the early 1900’s, American car manufacturers were producing all sorts of different vehicles, with different energy sources, including electric, steam, and gasoline cars in equal numbers. In those early days, buying a hybrid powered vehicle was as normal as buying an ordinary car.

In those early formative years of automotive development, some engineers figured out that a vehicle with multiple sources of power was not only possible, but an attractive alternative. In 1905, a certain American engineer named H. Piper filed for the first patent for a vehicle, with both gas and electric engines.

A decade later came the invention of the electric self-starter, which made gasoline-run cars much more feasible by eliminating the need to crank start the gasoline engine.  Hybrids and other alternative fuel based vehicles were almost wiped from the market.  The years following this period were characterized by plentiful and cheap oil, made possible by the almost inexhaustible supply from the oil fields of the Arab world. This discouraged auto engineers from continuing the development of alternative fuel based cars.

The oil embargo and its resulting gas price hikes of 1970s, coupled with a growing awareness of environmental concerns, drove engineers back to their drawing boards for new designs. Or shall we say back to some old technologies with a few new twists. Extensive experimentation in the late 1980s produced a new series of hybrid powered cars in the U.S. in 2000’s. The earlier experience of the market of mass-produced hybrid vehicles has given engineers the encouragement to come up with more complex systems, making multiple sources of power in a car feasible, once again.

In an interview by the Associated Press, Mr. Jim Press, president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, said: “I think everything will be a hybrid, eventually. It will either be a gas hybrid, a diesel hybrid, or a fuel-cell hybrid.”

From that point on, it was safe to declare that people buying hybrid cars, were people buying into the future of hybrid car designs.