Luxury automaker company Porsche has revealed that the first car designed in 1898 by its founder, Ferdinand Porsche, was electric. The car has been stored in a garage in Austria since 1902, being now part of an exhibition at the Porsche museum in Germany.
Mr. Porsche was 22 years old when car builder Jacob Lohner asked him to design an electric drive train. The final model was an “octagonal electric motor” powered by electric batteries and could reach up to 21mph and travel up to 49 miles on a single charge, an amount of energy that was far less than the average car consumption at those times.
The car, labeled as P1, eventually entered in a Berlin road race and beat out other competitors easily by travelling faster and consuming less energy. A green ride indeed.
The car is on display at the Porsche museum in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, Germany.