“It’s April 14, 1900, and a groundbreaking electric car, based on the Lohner-Porsche system, is celebrating its premiere at the Paris Exposition’s Palace of Electricity. It’s the innovative drive concept that brings widespread recognition of the Porsche name,” Porsche said.

“This is 24-year-old Ferdinand Porsche’s first foray into the limelight as an automotive engineer. For the company Jacob Lohner & Co. based in Vienna, he develops an electric vehicle with wheel-hub motors integrated into the front wheels in just ten weeks. Each of the two electric motors delivers 2.5 PS and the top speed of the Lohner-Porsche is 32 kmh. The brakes can be applied at all four wheels at the same time, which in 1900 is a milestone. That alone reveals that Ferdinand Porsche embodies a harmonious balance of technical talent, constructive creativity, and the drive to optimize existing solutions,” Porsche said.

The Berliner Zeitung newspaper said, “The vehicle’s epochal innovation is the full removal of the intermediate transmission (…) through the integration of the electric motors, the Porsche system, into the hubs of the front wheels.”