Just where did a hybrid car get it's beginnings? Read on to find out. Hybrid cars are very popular for today's car buyers and there are many reasons why that should be. But before you even think about choosing a hybrid vehicle to purchase, you might want to know a little bit about the history of the hybrid first.

It is surprising, but hybrid vehicles were around even before gas-powered cars. In about the year 1665, a Jesuit priest by the name of Ferdinand Verbeist began making plans for a new type of vehicle. That vehicle or cart would be very simple, nothing complex. Simple was all he was interested in.

So it was that Ferdinand planned out a car that would have four wheels and would run on steam. It took about fifteen years of sweat and toil for Ferdinand to complete his plan. He laboured to perfect his dream car. But no one knows for certain if he ever finished it because there is no physical evidence that his concept ever came into reality.

Then in 1769, a man by the name of Nicholas Cugnot designed and developed a carriage that was powered by steam. This vehicle really did work and it went at six miles per hour. This project was all well and good, but it was difficult to get the amount of steam needed to make the car to travel any significant distance.

The real break through in hybrid car development finally came in 1839 when Robert Anderson developed an electrically powered vehicle. It was the first of its kind and was built in Scotland.

This electric car was a highly applauded innovation of its time. However, the only problem was that it was very difficult to recharge the car's battery. Some pioneers came after Anderson, but they too had a hard time getting the battery recharged easily.

Then there was another outstanding break-through, in the year 1898, Porsche manufactured an electric and fuel combo combustion engine that was the first of its type. The vehicle was named the Lohner Electric Chaise and it could go for up to 40 miles using just its batteries.

Soon pioneers combined both a gas and a battery powered engine to power what would become today's hybrid car. In 1999, Honda made a leap into the US market. It came out with the Insight. This was a lightweight two-door hybrid. Since then, hybrid cars have just been evolving and improving into what you see on the markets today. Hybrid cars are not just for techies who think it's cool to combine battery and fuel power to get them where they need to go. Hybrid cars started out simple, and they are still simple today.

Nowadays hybrid cars are becoming more and more popular as people are getting to understand them better. In the 21st century, hybrids saw a big boom in sales after the Toyota Prius came on the streets. It was the first hybrid with four doors that was marketed for the USA.

Soon afterwards, the Ford Escape hybrid became the very first SUV hybrid vehicle ever made. And so there it is in a nut shell, the history of the hybrid car - today's most modern on road, mass-produced vehicle.