History of Hybrid Cars
If you think about it, the first hybrid vehicles would be those Greek, Viking and Phoenician triremes that are propelled by the wind and at the same time by oars. That's what essentially a hybrid is: a vehicle that runs on two types of power.
And consequentially, that's what makes the history of hybrid cars rather difficult to pinpoint, for the reason that there's just no clear standpoint wherein both technologies met.
On one account I've read, it says the history of hybrid cars is attributed to a certain Victor Wouk, a New Yorker who earned his baccalaureate degree from Columbia University on 1939. On this particular history of hybrid cars, it was recounted that as early as 1962, Victor Wouk had created the earliest prototype of a hybrid car. If true, it would essentially be the grandfather of today's hybrid cars since it operates remarkably in the same way as today's hybrid cars. Victor Wouk had combined a gasoline engine with an electric motor, working it in a way so that not only his Buick Skylark run on an RX-2 Mazda rotary engine, it is also supplemented in power by a 20 kilowatts of direct current electric motor. Though I believe that during this time, around 1960s and 1970s, that climate change is still far as becoming national concern, this history of hybrid cars account as far as stating that the EPA even emission tested the vehicle.
On a clearer note, the history of hybrid cars can be said as indirect offshoots to car designers looking to improve the promise set by the failing electric cars. During the oil starved crisis in the United States, when the west faced the Middle Eastern oil embargo, car manufacturers are pressured into building a vehicle that not only can curb the US dependency on foreign oil but at the same time can address to other environmental problem. GM had an answer, the electric cars. But because of several severe drawbacks, the electric car was halted and released models recalled. Several heaps of newly minted electric cars ended up on junkyards to be scrapped.
Then came hybrid cars, a vehicle that runs on both gasoline and electricity, with each weakness voided by the other's strengths. One of the biggest addresses of electric cars is falling short on the next recharging centre; hybrid cures this problem by starting the fuel engine, which also recharges the battery. On lower speeds where fuel efficiency is not on its best, the gasoline is turned off and the car runs on electricity alone.
