In 1916, hybrid automobiles may’ve modified historical past. However Ford would not enable it.

In October 1914, as fuel automobiles had been tightening their grip on America’s roads, Frank W. Smith, president of the Electrical Automobile Affiliation of America, stood earlier than a conference in Philadelphia and declared victory. Electrical automobiles, he stated, had been “completely and unquestionably the car of the long run, each for enterprise and pleasure.” With mass manufacturing and a wider community of charging stations simply across the nook, “it’s only a matter of time,” he promised, “when the electrically propelled car will predominate.”

The long run Smith imagined wouldn’t present indicators of life for almost 100 years, but it surely might need come far sooner had America’s industrial leaders stopped treating automotive energy as a binary alternative between gasoline and electrical energy. A compelling different lay in between. Hybrid energy was cleaner and able to guiding transportation by way of a extra climate-friendly century whereas batteries and charging infrastructure matured. However by the point an acceptable hybrid arrived—simply two years after Smith’s proclamation—the world had already dedicated itself to fuel.

Henry Ford and Thomas Edison tried to affect America’s automobiles

In 1914, Smith’s optimism appeared justified. All yr, E. G. Liebold, Henry Ford’s influential personal secretary, had been signaling to the press that Ford and Thomas Edison had been teaming as much as construct an affordable electrical automotive. Ford’s son, Edsel, was overseeing manufacturing and the automotive was set to be launched in 1915. 

With the 2 most well-known industrialists in America—the main car producer and the nation’s most celebrated inventor—becoming a member of forces to mass produce electrical cars, how may electrical automobiles fail? Earlier that yr, Ford and Edison, who had been buddies for greater than a decade, had even bought their very own electrical automobiles from main automotive producer Detroit Electrical to publicly affirm their religion in electrical energy.

The early twentieth century heyday of electrical automobiles

On the flip of the twentieth century, electrical automobiles had been symbols of refinement and technological progress, well-liked in rich city neighborhoods. Firms like Rauch & Lang, Columbia, Detroit Electrical, and Studebaker constructed electrical automobiles that had been meticulously engineered. They began on the flip of a swap. They had been quiet and provided a clean trip by way of busy metropolis streets. 

Charging stations appeared in carriage homes, public garages, and even exterior shops. Common Science featured such improvements, together with a three-wheeled electrical automotive designed to “glide by way of the purchasing district” and a “flivverette”—a miniature electrical automotive, sufficiently small to be parked in a “dog-house.” Electrical taxis competed with horse-drawn carriages to ferry passengers by way of dense city cores. In an period when roads had been nonetheless tough and driving was nonetheless novel, electrical cars appeared civilized.

Gasoline automobiles, in contrast, had been noisy and temperamental. To get them began required muscle to show a stiff crank. They rattled, stalled, and belched exhaust. Early motorists usually carried instruments and spare components, anticipating breakdowns as a part of the journey. 

Thomas Edison, like many, believed electrical automobiles would finally prevail over fuel. Obsessive about bettering battery expertise, Edison noticed the electrical car as a pure extension of his life’s work in electrical energy. Despite the fact that he was buddies with Henry Ford, and inspired Ford to develop inside combustion engines, Edison reportedly dismissed fuel automobiles as noisy and foul-smelling, praising electrical energy as cleaner and easier. Within the early years of the car age, the quiet hum of electrical motors, not the explosion of gasoline, appeared inevitable.

The Ford-Edison electrical automotive that by no means was

However by 1916, the Ford-Edison electrical automotive nonetheless hadn’t materialized. There was some hypothesis—by no means confirmed—that oil tycoons, like John D. Rockefeller, had persuaded Ford to kill the undertaking, however even with out such strain, electrical automotive expertise simply wasn’t aggressive with fuel. 

Batteries, which had been predominantly lead-acid or nickel-iron, had been too inefficient, too heavy, and too sluggish to recharge for the form of fast-paced, mass-market automotive world shoppers had been starting to demand. Plus, in 1916, electrical energy was scant exterior cities. 

Clinton Edgar Woods, the forgotten car inventor behind the primary hybrid automobiles

However whilst fuel automobiles surged, an engineer named Clinton Edgar Woods provided a special answer. As a substitute of selecting between electrical energy and fuel, he mixed them, creating the primary commercially viable hybrid automobile.

Right this moment, Woods has largely vanished from well-liked automotive historical past, however he was an vital innovator within the early days of automobiles. Earlier than he launched his hybrid in 1916, Woods had already been on the forefront of electrical automobile design for almost twenty years. In 1899, he launched one of many first electrical automotive corporations, the Woods Motor Automobile Firm. 

In 1900, earlier than the Ford Motor Firm even existed and greater than a decade earlier than Smith’s speech, Woods printed The Electrical Vehicle: Its Building, Care, and Operation. It was a consumer handbook grounded in electric-car operational fundamentals, approaching the topic as if electrical energy had been a foregone conclusion. He defined how one can keep batteries, how one can drive effectively, and how one can look after motors. It was not a do-it-yourself information for a fringe expertise; it was a seminal handbook for the automotive future.

The 1916 debut of Clinton Edgar Woods’s first hybrid automotive

Common Science introduced Woods’s new hybrid automotive with fascination in 1916. “The facility plan of this distinctive automobile,” the journal defined, “consists of a small gasoline motor and an electric-motor generator mixed in a single unit beneath the hood ahead of the sprint, and a storage battery beneath the rear seats.” Woods named the automotive the Twin Energy, referring to its twin energy sources. Right this moment, we name it a hybrid.

Woods’s automotive didn’t threaten gasoline’s emergence; it promised to leverage it. The place Ford, Edison, and Smith had been targeted on pure electrical, Woods provided a compromise. His hybrid was designed to protect the class and clean operation of electrical motors whereas conceding the sensible energy and vary that gas provided. His automotive provided dynamic braking with regenerative capabilities, utilizing the motor to sluggish the automotive and recharge its battery, a characteristic that might not be seen in automobiles for one more century. It additionally eradicated the necessity for a clutch, simplifying operation of the fuel engine, identical to an automated transmission. And his design used fuel energy to recharge the batteries, a should the place electrical energy was unavailable. 

Woods’s hybrid was not the primary dual-powered automotive—that declare possible goes to Ferdinand Porsche, who developed a hybrid in 1900, the Lohner-Porsche Semper Vivus—but it surely was the primary try to construct a mass-producible hybrid. By the point it arrived, nonetheless, the market had already made its alternative. 

In 1916, Ford alone offered greater than 700,000 fuel automobiles, whereas electrical automotive gross sales collapsed to lower than one % of all automobiles offered, sliding from the chief in 1900 to a mere area of interest. Woods’s Twin Energy automotive was one of many final critical efforts to salvage an electrical future that was slipping away.

Oil, fuel, and our love affair with inside combustion

The world didn’t abandon electrical automobiles as a result of they weren’t dependable or well-engineered; it deserted them as a result of gasoline solved fast issues electrical energy couldn’t, mainly velocity, vary, and gas distribution. At a time when the competitors between electrical energy and fuel was at an inflection level, infrastructure sealed the end result. It wasn’t till the Nineteen Thirties that electrical energy started to unfold reliably into rural areas.

In contrast, even within the early 1900s gasoline may very well be transported in barrels and cans. A gasoline automotive proprietor may discover fuel anyplace from a basic retailer to one of many new fueling stations. Electrical automobiles, then again, had been certain to their city grids, and charging them took for much longer than topping off a fuel tank.

Woods’s hybrid addressed the recharging limitation, and it provided a lot larger gas effectivity than gas-only automobiles, but it surely was almost 4 occasions the value of a Ford Mannequin T: $2,600 in 1916 (about $79,000 at present) whereas a Mannequin T value $700 (about $21,000 at present). Plus, the Twin Energy’s high velocity was 35 mph in comparison with the Mannequin T’s 45 mph. 

Had Woods possessed Ford’s mass-production functionality, the value hole might need narrowed. Even so, the hybrid’s inherent complexity would have added value and compromised velocity. And but, such disadvantages might need been overcome, particularly in city settings, had there been the imaginative and prescient and can amongst America’s industrialists. 

The highway not taken

If we had chosen hybrid designs within the youth of automotive energy, would we have now way back solved the restrictions of electrical automobile expertise and considerably lowered greenhouse fuel emissions? It’s inconceivable to know, however even at present the outlook stays combined. 

Within the U.S., electrical autos accounted for lower than eight % of the passenger automotive market in 2025, whereas gas-only autos nonetheless made up greater than 75 % of the roughly 16.2 million automobiles offered. Hybrids, in the meantime, have gained steadily—gross sales surged 36 % within the second half of 2025, reaching almost 15 % of all passenger automotive purchases. Globally, electrical automobile gross sales proceed to rise, with greater than 20 million electrified automobiles in 2025, principally in China and Europe. However electrical autos nonetheless symbolize lower than 1 / 4 of all automobiles offered, a determine that exhibits indicators of plateauing.

As America’s politics swing between wanting ahead to sustainable energy and falling again on our century-long love affair with oil and fuel, the hybrid might but have a task to play in transitioning automotive expertise again to electrical energy—the place it began. 

Simply as Clinton Edgar Woods noticed the knowledge of mixing the benefits of gasoline and electrical energy, so at present’s hybrids may function a bridge whereas battery expertise and charging infrastructure proceed to mature. In that sense, Woods’s hybrid is greater than a historic footnote; it’s a compass pointing us towards the highway not taken.

In A Century in Movement, Common Science revisits fascinating transportation tales from our archives, from hybrid automobiles to transferring sidewalks, and explores how these innovations are re-emerging at present in stunning methods.

 

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