With its future-oriented electric motors in the wheel hubs, the Lohner-Porsche was acknowledged as the absolute sensation at the Paris World Fair in 1900. On loan from the Technical Museum in Vienna, Austria, this outstanding achievement in technology protected today as a universal monument is now to be seen the first time outside of Europe at a motor show.

It was this vehicle, Ferdinand Porsche’s first major project completed at the time without layshafts and without a transmission that gave the 24-year-old automobile genius his breakthrough as a pioneer in the history of the automobile. Shortly thereafter Ferdinand Porsche added a combustion engine providing power for the electric generator to the electric drive system with two internal-pole motors in the front wheels. This made Porsche’s hybrid drive ready for production and provided a unique highlight at the Paris Motor Show in 1901.

More than 100 years later the engineers at Porsche’s Weissach Research & Development Centre took up precisely this concept, designing the future-oriented high-tech Cayenne Hybrid, a unique vehicle combining superior efficiency with equally superior driving dynamics. The Full-Parallel-Hybrid System developed by Porsche combines the best of two worlds so efficiently that the series-production will consume less than 9 liters/100 km. An equally important point was to maintain Porsche’s typically ambitious standards in terms of vehicle weight and driving dynamics also in the hybrid model. And perhaps the best news is that Porsche will be introducing this very economical SUV before the end of this decade.