Hardy Hybrid

As Europe’s first production hybrids celebrate their 20th birthday, we consider two of the pioneers.

- Paul Wager 

In this month’s Back Box column, Paul Guinness comments on the lack of success enjoyed by Clive Sinclair’s C5 and if we’re being honest that should probably get the prize for being the first properly usable (well, almost) electric vehicle on the UK market in the modern era.

As we point out though, the battery technology of the ’80s wasn’t up to any kind of useful range without pedal assistance and that’s a situation which remained into the ’90s and even today in some respects: battery technology has come on a long, long way but only incrementally and even Tesla hasn’t stumbled across the much-vaunted giant leap which will transform range/weight/ charge time.

This explains why the first truly practical electric cars didn’t rely solely on battery power but used a hybrid system of electric motor and petrol engine.

The German makers pinned their hopes to the hydrogen mast – BMW publicly stated at one point that this was its preferred solution – but the refuelling infrastructure was very much to be a long-term game. All of which left the Japanese makers free to jump in and create the market for petrol-electric hybrid cars, which were in reality far easier to engineer.

The first fully production-ready hybrid to hit the market was the Toyota Prius, which was launched in 1997, having appeared in concept form in 1995. The original model was sold only in Japan, but a revised version produced from 2000 was exported to Europe – although it was very obvious that the core market was California with its strict pollution laws.