First hybrid vehicle

The first vehicle to use a mixed internal combustion/electric drivetrain was the Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus, constructed in late 1900 at the Joseph Lohner and Company Coachworks in Vienna, Austria. The vehicle combined two "Systeme Porsche" electric hub motors with a pair of petrol engines in what would today be called a "series hybrid" arrangement. This means the engines acted as generators that fed the battery, and had no mechanical connection to the wheels. It was first publicly demonstrated in January 1901 at the Paris Motor Show.

The vehicle was designed by the 25-year-old engineer Ferdinand Porsche, who had joined the company two years earlier. It was the successor to the Lohner-Porsche Elektromobil, an all-electric vehicle that the company had demonstrated at the Paris Exposition a few months earlier. The Elektromobil was well received, but the design's massive weight – the lead-acid battery weighed as much as 1,800 kg (3,968 lb) in some variants – and limited range – it could travel only around 38 km (24 mi) on a single charge – prevented it from selling in large numbers.

In an effort to solve both the weight and range problems, Porsche replaced the massive battery pack with a pair of De Dion-Bouton 1.7-kW (2.5-hp) petrol engines. These engines generated electricity for a much smaller, lighter battery that powered the front-wheel hub motors. He named this updated Elektromobil Semper Vivus ("Always Alive"). It could travel around 40 km (25 mi) on battery power, and as much as 160 km (100 mi) with the assistance of the petrol engines. Its top speed was around 55 km/h (35 mph) – considered fairly fast at the time.

The Semper Vivus was the prototype for a commercially-available hybrid vehicle called the Lohner-Porsche "Mixte", which remained in production until 1915. By the 1920s, however, advances in internal combustion engine design had pushed electric vehicles to the sidelines. They would not reappear until battery technology made them commercially feasible again in the 1990s. Ferdinand Porsche never quite let go of the idea, though; he proposed several other hybrid vehicle designs and even used a hybrid drivetrain in his design for a World-War II tank destroyer (the Panzerjäger Tiger "Elefant").