ELECTRIC
DREAMS
WORDS AND IMAGES: MICHAEL BROWNING
HYBRIDS HAVE ALLOWED US TO ‘BRIDGE’ INTO FULLY ELECTRIC
VEHICLES, AND ECO-CONSCIOUS VANNERS WITH DEEP POCKETS
NEED NOT MISS OUT. TOWING A CAR TRAILER, MICHAEL
BROWNING TESTED THE PORSCHE CAYENNE E-HYBRID.
According to our prime minister, electric vehicles
can’t tow and must stay at home at weekends,
while the current petrol and diesel-engined
dinosaurs have all the fun.
Well, it sounded pretty scary to those who
didn’t know better and I’ll bet few knew about
Ferdinand Porsche’s pioneering work in the late
19th century.
Fifty years before the first Porsche
sports car was built, the Lohner-
36 \
Porsche Mixt Hybrid that the good professor
designed and unveiled in 1898 was the world’s
first hybrid vehicle. The first prototypes were two-
wheel drive, battery-powered electric vehicles
with two front-wheel hub-mounted motors, but
a later version was a series hybrid, using hub-
mounted electric motors in each wheel, powered
by batteries and a gasoline-engine generator.