HISTORY OF HYBRID ENGINES
AND
FUEL CELLS
A Brief History of the Hybrid
THE 18TH CENTURY
1769: The first steam-powered motor carriage is built by Frenchman Nicholas Cugnot and is capable of moving six miles per hour.
THE 19TH CENTURY
1839: Aberdeen, Scotland – Robert Anderson builds the first electric vehicle.
1897: Harford, Connecticut – the Pope Manufacturing Company builds about 500 electric cars in a two-year period.
1898: At 23 years old, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche of Germany built the Lohner Electric Chaise. His second car was a hybrid that could travel 40 miles on battery alone.
Dr. Ferdinand Porsche with the first hybrid motor vehicle.
1899: Electric Vehicle Company – result of a merger between the Pope Manufacturing Company and two smaller electric car companies. It is the first large-scale operation in the U.S. automobile industry with assets of $200 million.
THE 20TH CENTURY
1904: Henry Ford begins his assembly-line production of “low-priced, lightweight, gas-powered vehicles” and thus the Electric Vehicle Company fails within a few years.
A car made by the Kreiger company which used a gasoline engine to supplement a battery pack.
1905: H. Piper, an American engineer, files a patent for a petrol-electric hybrid car.
1913: Steamers and electrics are almost wiped out with the invention of the self-starter which made it easier for drivers to start gas engines. Sales of electric cars drop to 6,000 and the Ford Model T sells over 182,000 gasoline cars.
1920-1965: Inactive period for the mass-production of electric and hybrid cars.
1966: First bill introduced by Congress with a recommendation to use electric vehicles to reduce air pollution.
1970s: The Arab oil embargo of 1973 brings increased gasoline prices and a new interest in electric and hybrid vehicles.
1975: Government program to advance electric and hybrid technology is implemented by the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration.
1976: Public Law 94-413, the Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Research, Development, and Demonstration Act of 1976 – Congress enacts law to begin work with industries to improve “batteries, motors, controllers, and other hybrid-electric components.”
1977-1979: Electric vehicles are expected to be in production by the mid-1980s according to a General Motor report after $20 million is spent on development and research of electric cars.
1991: United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC) launches a program to make a “super” battery in hopes of getting electric cars on the road as soon as possible. The USABC invests over $90 million in the nickel hydride battery which can “accept three times as many charge cycles as lead-acid” and also works well in the cold weather.
1992: Toyota Motor Company releases a document that outlines goals to develop and market vehicles with the lowest emissions possible. It is called the “Earth Charter.”
1997: Japan – the Toyota Prius goes on public sale and sells almost 18,000 vehicles in the first year.
The 1997 Toyota Prius that sold over 18,000 cars within the first year.
1997-1999: Big automakers including Honda, General Motor, Ford, and Toyota introduce a small number of all-electric cars in California. They failed to have a few hundred drivers per model and the all-electric programs were dropped within a few years.
1999: Honda releases the first hybrid car on the market in the United States – the two-door Insight. The vehicle receives an “EPA mileage rating of 61 mpg city and 70 mpg highway.”
THE 21ST CENTURY
2000: The first four-door sedan hybrid available in the United States is released – the Toyota Prius.
2002: Honda’s second available hybrid gasoline-electric car, the Honda Civic Hybrid is introduced to the public.
2002 Honda Civic Hybrid
2004: “The Toyota Prius II won 2004 Car of the Year Awards from Motor Trend Magazine and the North American Show.” The demand for the vehicle causes an increase of production from 36,000 to 47,000 for the U.S. Market and potential buyers must wait up to six months for their vehicle. Ford releases the first American hybrid and the first SUV hybrid, the Escape Hybrid, in September.
2004: Railpower has been running pilots in the United States with the so called Green Goats which lead to orders starting in early 2005.
2005: GE introduced its hybrid shifters on the market. The Blue Ribbon City Hybrid bus was presented by Hino, a Toyota affiliate, in January 2005.
2005: Isuzu introduced the Elf Diesel Hybrid Truck on the Japanese Market --approximately 300 of these vehicles, mostly route buses, are using Hinos HIMR (Hybrid Inverter Controlled Motor & Retarder) system.
2005: New York City added six Ford Escape Hybrids to their taxi fleet and city officials believe the entire fleet of 13,000 vehicles could be converted to hybrid within five years.
A Brief History of the Fuel Cell Engine
THE 19TH CENTURY
1838: The idea of the fuel cell was discovered by Swiss scientist Christian Friedrich Schönbein and was developed by a Welsh scientist Sir William Grove.
1843: A sketch was published and and Welsh Scientist Sir William Grove created the first fuel cell.
THE 20TH CENTURY
1959: A 5 kW stationary fuel cell is successfully developed by British engineer Francis Thomas Bacon.
1959: Harry Ihrig led a team that built a 15 kW fuel cell tractor that was demonstrated throughout the United States at state fairs. This system used potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte and compressed hydrogen and oxygen as the reactants.
1959: Francis Bacon and his colleagues demonstrated a practical five-kilowatt unit capable of powering a welding machine.
1960s: Bacon's patents are licensed in the United States where the concepts were used in the space program to supply electricity and drinking water (hydrogen and oxygen being readily available from the spacecraft tanks).
Late 1980s and early 1990s: Fuel cells became a real option for wider application base. Several innovations help to drive the cost of fuel cells down and allowed making developments of PEMFC systems such as automobiles more realistic.