by Colin Jones

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 bit about the history of the hybrid first.

Surprisingly, hybrid cars were around even before gas-powered cars. Back in about the year 1665, a Jesuit priest by the name of Ferdinand Verbeist began plans for a certain type of vehicle. That vehicle would be very simple, nothing complex, or intricate. Simple was all he wanted.

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 complete 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 by the name of Nicholas Cugnot developed a carriage that was driven by steam. This carriage did in fact work, and it could go at six miles per hour. This project was great, but it was difficult to get the amount of steam needed that would 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 model electric car was a highly applauded innovation of its time. However, the only problem was that it was very difficult to recharge the car’s battery. Some pioneers did come after Anderson, but they had the same problem of getting the battery recharged easily.

Finally in the year 1898 Porsche manufactured an electric and fuel combustion engine that was the first of its time. The car was called the Lohner Electric Chaise, and it could go up to 40 miles just using batteries.

Within a short space of time, 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 cool to combine battery and fuel power to get them where they need to go. Hybrid cars started out simple, and they are still quite simple today.

Now hybrid cars are becoming more and more popular as people understand them more. Hybrid cars in the 21st century saw a boom in sales when the Toyota Prius came out on the market. It was the first hybrid with four doors that was marketed in America.

Soon after, the Ford Escape hybrid became the very first SUV hybrid ever made. So there it is in a nutshell, the history of the hybrid car - today’s modern car.

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