First Porsche Built In 1898 Found In A Barn, And It's An EV

The Porsche name is synonymous with sports cars and other performance vehicles. In recent years, the company has branched out to make SUVs and hybrid cars. One of the most high performance cars to roll out of the Porsche factory is the 918 Spyder, which is a hybrid car with incredible performance.

The very first vehicle to wear the Porsche crest has turned up. You might think the very first Porsche would use some sort of combustion engine, but the vehicle is actually an EV. The car is called the Egger-Lohner electric vehicle, C.2 Phaeton model. It is the first car design produced by Ferdinand Porsche when he was 22 and working for Jakon Lohner & Comp. That company made luxury cars for European royalty.

This very first Porsche was built in 1898 from a mix of metal and wood in a carriage frame, it looks more like a horse drawn carriage than a car. It has engraved P1 marks on parts and gauges hooked up to the lead acid batteries that power the car. The gauges gave a readout of the miles remaining before the car batteries were dead.

The early Porsche EV weighed 2997 pounds with a third of that weight being the 1103 pound lead-acid battery. The car could go 49.7 miles on a charge, which is about as good as some modern EVs. The electric motor for the car was a mere 3hp giving it a top speed of 15.5 mph. It did have a function for overdrive that pushed power to 5hp and top speed to 21.75mph.

SOURCE: DailyTech