Hybrid History notes that “conceptually speaking, there is little really new under the automotive sun”:
In 1900, a Belgian maker, Pieper, introduced a 3-1/2 horsepower “voiturette” in which the small gasoline engine was mated to an electric motor under the seat. When the car was “cruising,” its electric motor was in effect a generator, recharging the batteries. But when the car was climbing a grade, the electric motor, mounted coaxially with the gas engine, gave it a boost. It was a crude but uncanny anticipation of the new Honda hybrid’s “integrated motor assist” (IMA) system.
Ferdinand Porsche took the next step:
Hired by an Austrian carmaker, Jacob Lohner, Porsche at first developed a then-sensational system whereby two electric motors, attached directly to the front wheels, powered the car.These very fast “Lohner-Porsches” won many auto races. But their practical use was hampered by the same shortcomings that have haunted pure electric cars to this day – batteries that weighed too much and stored too little electricity, restricting cruising range.
Porsche solved that problem, with his own mixte system, “mixing” an internal combustion engine with electric motors that improved on the scheme of the Krieger cars. His solution was elegant — the internal combustion engine (ICE) powered a dynamo, which sent its current directly to the electric motors at the car’s wheels. The driveshaft was eliminated.
The cars were sensational performers and the young Porsche loved to race them. He soon built a Lohner mixte with electric motors on all four wheels. These cars achieved speeds of 70 miles an hour, which in 1903 was a more than head-turning speed.
Modern technology has finally made the hybrid workable:
Without getting into technical details, the Prius is a rolling clinic on what can happen when advances in know-how and materials catch up with elegant ideas and daring dreams. The small, powerful, reliable electric motors designed and built today are a far cry from the wheel motors on Porsche’s mixte cars, which weighed almost 250 pounds each. And early 20th Century engineers could not conceive of the role advanced electronics and microprocessors would play in managing, monitoring and switching power between the ICE and the electric motor.