A closer look
If you thought the Toyota Prius was a bold modern innovation, you are about a century late to the party. Long before he was building absurdly fast luxury sports cars, a young Ferdinand Porsche created the "Semper Vivus." It was the world's very first hybrid vehicle, featuring a combustion engine that acted exclusively as a generator to supply power to electric motors located inside the wheel hubs. The oil industry subsequently dominated the 20th century, effectively burying hybrid technology for a hundred years.
