First-Ever Porsche Rediscovered: Electric Power from 1898 | Hacker News Reader

First-Ever Porsche Rediscovered: Electric Power from 1898

ca.finance.yahoo.com

51 pointsmiaowmix27 comments

> Ferdinand Porsche debuted the vehicle, dubbed the Egger-Lohner C.2 Phaeton, on the streets of Vienna in 1989. It was one of the first vehicles of its kind on the Austrian streets– or anywhere else in the world, for that matter.

Like I always say, you gotta watch out for those off-by-a-hundred errors.

What amazing time the brink of the XX century might have been to inventors. Not only one of the first automobiles, but sporting an electric engine, a technology invented some 30 years before.

Nice find... F Porsche was certainly ahead of the curve even before the VW.

I saw this earlier today on the Porsche forums and it created quite a buzz. This car is worth magnitudes more than an original 356.

As a child, he wired his house for electricity. He was ahead of the curve before he himself was producing cars, no matter the badge.

That sounds incredibly dangerous.

Maybe a bit of recklessness is a good thing once in a while.

You ever buy a Porsche(s) when you first heard they were going to water cooled?

Here is the factory vid of the new Porsche 918 Spyder Electric Hybrid.

Go from 600/hp to Electric Drive silence with a push of a button.

This car also owns the current lap time record on the Nürburgring (Nordschleife)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Qs-B5gTmE

Geeze, that's some truly awful CGI in the first section of that video. You can tell the director is well aware, too, cutting away at every opportunity - quite a contrast to the loving treatment the camera later gives the 918.

You'd think Porsche, of all companies, would spend a little more and get something that looks the part.

You think the director was trying to emulate the vid quality from that place and time in the video?

Hadn't thought of that. Even if so, I'd say they still failed - the car doesn't look like an old film, it looks like crappy CGI, with a lazy "blur shadow" underneath and wooden-doll driver.

Now combine the two

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche_Mixte_Hybrid

What happened to this nice electric car from 1900s? After 100 years it got transformed into some batmobile that's mostly useless...

fastest record modulo mclaren and ferarri's hypercar showdown, anyway.

Any links to those lap times? I can't find anything definitive other than "under 7 minutes" for McLaren. The 918 seems to be the fastest production car with an actual time that I can find. That ignores the the Radical SR8 since those appear to be pure race cars.

The funny thing is, batteries still suck. Motors, on the other hand, have gotten awesome: http://teslamotors.com/

http://www.teslamotors.com

They sure are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOqWlOrlkIg

(2013 Tesla Model S P85 vs 2014 Chevrolet Corvette C7 Z51 Drag Racing 1/4 Mile)

Its amazing how far the automotive industry has come in a mere 110 years since then. This year the 918 Spyder, McLaren P1 and Ferrari LaFerrari hybrid supercars will fight for the crown of the most advanced sportscar and their tech is simply astonishing.

Not really HN material.

Why not? Ferdinand was a visionary that followed his intuition against all odds and produced an iconic product.

Visionary, yes. There are some pretty serious question marks over his character however. http://m.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-652371.html#spRe...

I don't think these are just 'question marks'. It's pretty clear that Ferdinand Porsche was a Nazi and he supported the German war machine in a big way.

"Morally suspect" also fits the HN community pretty well. Plenty of terrible people are celebrated for their non- terrible contributions.

I'll just leave this[1] here as evidence. I still celebrate his work, just not his character.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7134774#up_7135480

Yeah, I can't even parse that discussion. Jumping in mid-thread didn't help.

Even non-terrible people for their terrible contributions.

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