Ferdinand Alexander Porsche (1935-2012)

Ferdinand Porsche

Ferdinand Porsche was born on the 3rd of September in 1875 in the village of Maffersdorf, now part of the city of Liberec, in the north of the Czech Republic but then within the Austria-Hungary Empire. The third of five children his father, Anton Porsche, was the owner of a plumbing workshop. Ferdinand, was expected to take over the family business, but he had other interests: at the age of 14 he was already performing experiments with electricity. After completing both his plumber apprenticeship and the state trade school in Reichenberg, he began working at the electrical company Bela Egger & Co. in Vienna.

In 1897, he built an electric wheel-hub motor and went to work for Jacob Lohner & Co. in their newly established “Electric Car Department”. In 1900, the Lohner-Porsche – a non-transmission vehicle powered by the Porsche wheel-hub engine – was celebrated as an epoch-making innovation at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Instead of complex drive trains, internal-pole electric motors powered the front wheels directly. The hub-mounted electric motors were powered by batteries with a terminal voltage of 60 – 80 volts and a capacity of 170 – 300 ampere-hours (Ah). At a normal speed of 35 km/h the vehicle had a range of around 50 km. The Lohner-Porsche was an elegant, easy-to-operate vehicle for city use. It was particularly well suited for regular use as part of a vehicle fleet. The Vienna fire brigade acquired 40 vehicles that were based on the Lohner-Porsche drive system. Taxis with a Lohner-Porsche drive system also operated successfully in Berlin.