His father was a master panel-beater. He showed a strong aptitude for mechanical work at a very early age. He attended classes at the Imperial Technical School in Reichenberg Czech : Liberec at night while helping his father in his mechanical shop by day. Other than attending classes there, Porsche never received any higher engineering education. Their first design was the Egger-Lohner vehicle also referred to as the C. First unveiled in Vienna, Austria, on 26 June , Porsche had engraved the code "P1" standing for Porsche, number one, signifying Ferdinand Porsche's first design onto all the key components.
The Egger-Lohner was a carriage-like car driven by two electric motors within the front wheel hubs, powered by batteries. This drive train construction was easily expanded to four-wheel drive , by mounting two more electric motors to the rear wheels, and a four-motor example was ordered by Englishman E. Hart in Though it "showed wonderful speed when it was allowed to sprint", [ citation needed ] the weight of the batteries rendered it slow to climb hills.
It also suffered from limited range due to limited battery life. Still employed by Lohner, Porsche introduced the " Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid" in instead of a massive battery-pack, an internal combustion engine built by the German firm Daimler drove a generator which in turn drove the electric wheel hub motors.
As a backup a small battery pack was fitted. This is the first petroleum-electric hybrid vehicle on record. Since sufficiently reliable gears and couplings were not available at the time, he chose to make it a series-hybrid , an arrangement now more common in diesel-electric or turbo-electric railway locomotives than in automobiles. Though over Lohner-Porsche chassis were sold up to , most of them were two-wheel drive; either front- or rear-wheel driven trucks, buses and fire-engines.
Some four wheel drive buses were produced, but no four wheel drive automobiles. It was later upgraded with more powerful engines from Daimler and Panhard , which proved to be enough to gain more speed records. In he was drafted into military service. In , Austro-Daimler recruited Porsche as their chief designer. Porsche had advanced to Managing Director by and received an honorary doctorate from the Vienna University of Technology in the title "Dr.
