The first Porsche vehicles – electric Press release

June 28, 2022

The information was prepared by Julia Locmele, Head of Marketing.

Although it may seem that electric cars appeared on the streets only recently, in fact this was the first time in the last century – their history dates back almost 200 years. The first car of the famous Porsche brand was also electric.

The company’s founder, Ferdinand Porche, created his first electric car back in 1898, when he was only 23 years old.

The life story of the founder of the Porsche company is as exciting as any trip with a sports car named after him, although the beginning was quite modest.

Born into a small-town tinsmith in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, what is now the Czech Republic, his father owned a repair shop and his son was able to continue the business, but Ferdinand had other plans.

It is known that in his youth he was so fascinated by electricity that he installed an electric lighting system in his parents’ home. In 1893, when Ferdinand was 18, he moved to Vienna and became an apprentice at the electrical engineering company Bela Egger & Co, while studying at the Technical University in Reihenberg.

A young man with ambitions

His ambitions and hard work did not go unnoticed – in a few years he grew from an apprentice to one of the leading positions at Bela Egger & Co.

In 1897, as the head of the company’s testing department, he developed an electric hub motor, then in cooperation with the wheel manufacturer Jacob Lohner & Co began work on the creation of an electric car. It should be recalled that Ferdinand Porche was only 22 at the time.

Bela Egger & Co and Jacob Lohner & Co collaborated to create an electric vehicle called the Egger-Lohner. The head of Lohner believed that electric cars would be in demand in the market because they were not noisy and did not produce exhaust fumes. Lohner commissioned Porche to design and build an electric drive while they did the chassis and bodywork themselves.

P1 – the very first Porsche?

The vehicle, which debuted on the streets of Vienna on June 26, 1898, was named “P1”. Ferdinand Porche already knew that this was only the first car to be followed by other Porsche cars in the future. Incidentally, the P1 was not only the first car created by Porch, but also one of the first vehicles registered in Austria.

The P1 itself was a pretty impressive car – both at the time and from today’s point of view.

That’s right, the engine of the first car Porch designed and built was in the back! Mr Porsche’s “octagonal electric motor” – so named because of its body shape – weighed 130 kg and had 3 hp (2.2 kW).

The total weight of the P1 was around 1360 kilograms, consisting of a 500-kilogram battery and 860 kilograms of the vehicle itself. The maximum speed that the P1 could reach was 40 kilometers per hour.

The P1 had 12 speeds. Six of them were designed to move forward, two were reversing and four acted as brakes. If not driven at full speed all the time, the distance that could be covered on a single charge was 80 kilometers – more than many petrol prototypes at the time.

The Porsche P1 won its first race

Back in 1899, the first Porsche also won the first race in which it participated. An international exhibition of 19 electric vehicle manufacturers took place in Berlin, during which the race was also held, and the “P1” won the 38-kilometer track in 18 minutes.

Mr Porsche himself rode with three passengers in accordance with the rules, and he successfully overcame the slopes and tested his efficiency on the high-speed sections.

More than half of the competitors did not even reach the finish line, while others were disqualified for failing to meet the minimum speed requirements. Not only did the P1 win the race, it also won the highest efficiency in terms of energy consumption in city traffic.

A total of four P1 cars were built, after which Ferdinand Porsche joined Lohner as chief designer and created the Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus, which is now recognized as the world’s first hybrid car. But that is another story.

Although electric cars appeared earlier than internal combustion engines, their triumphal procession began relatively recently. The Porsche brand also resumed series production of electric cars in 2019, when the first Porsche Taycan models were unloaded from the manufacturer’s plant in Stuttgart. New models have joined the Taycan family this year, proving that the future of these cars is bright.

About “Baltic Sports Car”

The official representative of “Porsche” in Latvia – SIA “Baltijas sporta auto” – is proud of a dynamic, knowledgeable team and more than 20 years of experience in the car trade industry. “Baltijas sporta auto” is an authorized “Porsche” dealer in Latvia, which provides reliable and customer-oriented sales and car service.

Additional information:

Julia Locmele

Marketing manager

SIA “Baltijas sporta auto”

Phone: (+371) 20 364 118

E-mail: [email protected]

https://www.porsche.lv

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