Check out the first-ever electric car designed by Porsche, the 1898 P1

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  The P1 was lost for 116 years, then found in a warehouse in Austria. [credit: Porsche ]

With the Porsche Taycan finally making its way to customers, we thought it worth looking back and remembering Porsche’s first battery-electric car. In this case, that means all the way back to 1898 and the Egger-Lohner electric vehicle, C.2 Phaeton model. Thankfully, Porsche himself referred to the car simply as the P1.

As a young man, Ferdinand Porsche was fascinated by electricity and chose not to follow in the footsteps of his small-town tinsmith father. In 1893 he moved to Vienna at the age of 18 to begin an apprenticeship at electrical firm Bela Egger & Co. while simultaneously enrolling as a student at the Imperial Technical University in Reichenberg.

This ambition and hard work paid off, as he was given a management position at Egger & Co. within just a few years of starting as an apprentice. Now the head of the company’s testing department, 1897 was a milestone year for Mr. Porsche: he built an electric wheel-hub motor; he met with carriage manufacturer Jacob Lohner & Co.; and he began working on an electric car. Ferdinand Porsche was still just 22 years old.