Early Hybrid Vehicles

1900

Porsche showed his hybrid car at the Paris Exposition of 1900. A gasoline engine was used to power a generator which, in turn, drove a small series of motors. The electric engine was used to give the car a little bit of extra power. This method of series hybrid engine is still in use today, although obviously with further scope of performance improvement and greater fuel savings.  

1915

Woods Motor Vehicle manufacturers created the Dual Power hybrid vehicle, second hybrid car in market. Rather than combining the two power sources to give a single output of power, the Dual Power used an electric battery motor to power the engine at low speeds (below 25km/h) and used the gasoline engine to carry the vehicle from these low speeds up to its 55km/h maximum speed. While Porsche had invented the series hybrid, Woods invented the parallel hybrid.  

1918

The Woods Dual Power was the first hybrid to go into mass production . In all, some 600 models were built by. However, the evolution of the internal combustion engine left electric power a marginal technology  

1960

Victor Wouk worked in helping create numerous hybrid designs earned him the nickname of the “Godfather of the Hybrid”. In 1976 he even converted a Buick Skylark from gasoline to hybrid.  

1978

Modern hybrid cars rely on the regenerative braking system. When a standard combustion engine car brakes, a lot of power is lost because it dissipates into the atmosphere as heat. Regenerative braking means that the electric motor is used for slowing the car and it essentially collects this power and uses it to help recharge the electric batteries within the car. This development alone is believed to have progressed hybrid vehicle manufacture significantly. The Regenerative Braking System, was first designed and developed in 1978 by David Arthurs. Using standard car components he converted an Opel GT to offer 75 miles to the gallon and many home conversions are done using the plans for this system that are still widely available on the Internet.