Featured The Story Behind the Birth of the Prius

thank you for the reminder @Trollbait,
we forgot some of other S-10 EV fun facts (which only makes sense - as far as economic R&D goes). The S-10ev had the same guts & evolution as the EV1 ... both initially entering production with inefficient/heavy lead batteries, then switching to Ovionic's much more efficient nickel metal hydride. Sadly, GM refused to promote the new chemistry - which lead to it's biggest promoter, Stan Ovshinsky,
Stanford Ovshinsky dies at 89; inventor founded new field of electronics - LA Times
(his company, Ovionics) using his own money to advertise the better range chemistry. Almost laughable, a legal injunction was brought about, to stop him from the promotion of his large format nickel chemistry in both the original Toyota RAV4-EV as well as the EV1 & S-10ev pickup. The smaller nickel metal hydride formatted batteries are still running around the landscape to this day, in many a Prius. Thank you Stan - you were/are one of the great heroes to which we all owe a HUGE debt of gratitude ... proving not only are there better battery chemistries on the horizon, but that sometimes it's the great innovators like yourself that drag the rest of the industry begrudgingly forward.
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Patent encumbrance of large automotive NiMH batteries - Wikipedia

 

Can you imagine where EV technology would be today if GM would have kept up the research and technology evolution from the EV1!? It's still insane to me..

 

Yeah but that was old-GM. The pre-2009 company. If they had somehow survived the financial crisis, now-GM would be even further behind their competitors on the ev scoreboard.

 

Much of that technology did end up in later GM hybrids and the Volt. They had four door and PHEV concepts of the EV1 back then.

A problem with the Impact and other concept cars from PNGV was that the car companies didn't have to bring a car to market from it. Those hybrids had some amazing fuel efficiency, but they did it by being diesels with heavy use of materials like aluminum for reducing weight. As is, they would have been for more expensive than a comparable car for sale at the time.

The Volt started under old-GM, and it was one of the programs the government wanted to end as condition for the bail out. New-GM had to fight to keep it.

 

Besides the battery EV-1, they also made a CNG, a Series Hybrid, a Parallel Hybrid and a Fuel Cell EV-1.

 

There were a hand full of EV1's donated to universities - & (at least) 1 to a private collection, with much of their running guts pulled. The understanding (contractual agreement) between GM & the donee's was that they'd NEVER be rebuilt to street legal / licensed condition. A couple EV1's have been rebuilt .... & that begs the question - since the agreement was with the old GM which no longer exists due to its bankruptcy - one would think that the "DO NOT MAKE STREET LEGAL" agreement is no longer enforceable due to the death/non-existence of one of the parties.

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IIUC, there are similar questions being floated about why Russia's got the USSR's permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

 

I've long wondered if a 3d scanned EV1 and foam and fiber glass body, kit car could be made. Sold with an after market electric drivetrain, voila!

More expensive, CAD an impact structure with modern materials, perhaps even startup a small production line. Call it the "ELON-III".

Bob Wilson

 

It's body yielded a 0.19cd - which to this day has not been surpassed by any production car. Hats off to the aero engineers that pulled off such a feat - decades ago. Engineers comparable to what Kelly Johnson (SR71) pulled off so many decades ago ... drag cd ahead of its time - development beginning in the late 50's.
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they probably could if they wanted it to look something like this:

General_Motors_EV1

 

Kind of cool cool cool update - as the never sold to the public ev1 has been trounced, drag cd-wise by the Limited production, carbon fiber body over magnesium frame - 250 units or so actually sold to the public, & only one ever imported to the USA. The plug-in, 800cc, 2cyl common rail diesel XL1 Volkswagen.



drag cd of 0.188
(yea if you do a rounding error it would be the same as the Ev1. )

Volkswagen 1-litre car - Wikipedia

EV1 fuel efficiency equivalency estimated to be around 95 MPGE. XL1 Fuel efficiency estimated at 260 MPGe. But that's the more liberal European fuel standard so it's probably only getting 180-190 MPG on the US std.

 

What always stood out to me about the Prius story is how much of it wasn’t an overnight “big idea,” but more of a long internal push at Toyota to rethink efficiency when most of the industry was still focused purely on bigger engines and incremental gains. Once you dig into the early development work, it makes more sense why the first-gen car looked the way it did. It was clearly built around solving a very specific engineering problem rather than trying to follow market trends at the time.

One thing I’ve found helpful when reading up on its origin is paying attention to how Toyota treated the hybrid system as a long-term platform rather than a one-off experiment. That mindset shift is probably what allowed the later generations to improve so steadily without needing to reinvent everything from scratch each time.

 

That is the US centric version of the story, as most other markets put more emphasis on efficiency. The Prius was actually born out of the Japan MITI(a ministry of tech and industry) LEV programs. That was a low emission vehicle program that its first phase started in the 1970s. When the public was speaking out against pollution. Also happens to be when Godzilla vs Hedrah came out. Being born out of a LEV program is why the Prius prioritized emissions over efficiency. The car could get even better fuel mileage while still being cleaner than most other cars, but that wasn't the goal set by the Japanese government.

The first phase was government and industry funded lab research into potential technologies to lower car emissions in cities. Eventually, it got to the point to assisting development and sales of BEVs, hybrids, and other LEV cars. It provided a direct subsidy to Toyota and others for such cars sold. That was in place before the Prius went to market in 1996.

A sad outcome of the LEV program was the industry groupthink that formed around plug ins and hydrogen. It was the EV1 era when it came to an end. The EVs available were using lead-acid batteries with maybe a few NiMH ones. The conclusion drawn was BEVs would only work for short range city cars, and fuels were needed for longer ranges. This thinking stuck with upper management of car companies even after many other hybrids had shifted to Li-ion. To see the results of this thinking just compare the in house iQ EV to the outsourced to Tesla Rav4 EV.

 

I was impressed by starting with the seat height. Our Gen 1 Prius was the first easy to get in and out. It really was a brilliant design. Not perfect but good enough and unique.

Bob Wilson

 

and then look what happened by gen 5

 

Gen5 is the result of dropping sales globally. Which was partly caused by Toyota's hybrid success. The Prius was no longer needed for a hybrid flagship. So Toyota decided to 'mainstream' it to prop up sales. I would have preferred it becoming a plug in only, even a BEV, but Toyota was likely likely even considering ending it.

 

Don't be too hard on those executives. It is really really hard to give up all that factory investment and engineering expertise to shift in such a radical way. And it costs in shareholder satisfaction as your profits sag.

(Personal experience, I went through 4 radical technology shifts and 14 different company ownerships in a 37 year work life. I always had a freakish adaptability. But it did involve periods of lower productivity while the new technology was bought and learned on.).

 

That didn't seem to be a hinderance in doing a radical shift to hydrogen and fuel cells. It wasn't a case of not adopting a new technology. It was discounting another tech based on two decade old data.

 

A couple of months ago, I watched an excellent documentary series about "The Cars that Built America".

One interesting topic was the patent, in 1895, by a patent lawyer who didn't invent anything, or make cars, but every auto maker had to pay him a royalty until 1916 when Henry Ford had enough and told him to pound sand. (Went to court and court agreed with Mr. Ford.)

George B. Selden was granted the first U.S. patent for a gasoline-powered automobile on November 5, 1895 (Patent No. 549,160). Although he filed in 1879, he didn't build a working prototype until years later, and his patent sparked a major legal battle with Henry Ford.
Key Details regarding the Patent:

• The "Inventor": George B. Selden was a patent lawyer and inventor from Rochester, NY, who specialized in securing patents.
• Delayed Filing: Selden filed for the patent on May 8, 1879, but used legal tactics to delay its issuance for 16 years, allowing it to be granted when the auto industry was beginning to grow.
• The Patent's Scope: The patent was for a "road-engine" combining a 2-stroke internal combustion engine with a chassis, effectively giving him a monopoly on early gas-powered cars.
• Legal Battle with Ford: The Electric Vehicle Company bought rights to the patent and demanded royalties. Henry Ford refused to pay, leading to a lawsuit in 1903. In 1911, an appeals court ruled that the patent only applied to engines specifically matching Selden’s design (a Brayton-type engine), not all gasoline cars, ending the monopoly.

So since Toyota seemed to be the Father of the Hybrid, with numerous patents, I checked to see if other makers have to pay Toyota when they come out with a Hybrid:

As of 2019, Toyota announced it would grant royalty-free access to nearly 24,000 patents, specifically 23,740, related to hybrid and electric vehicle technologies, including motors, batteries, and power control units. This extensive portfolio covers over 20 years of development and includes thousands of patents for electric motors, system controls, and chargers.
Key details regarding Toyota's patent portfolio:

• Total Portfolio: In 2019, Toyota announced the release of 23,740 patents for licensing, most of which were related to hybrid technology.
• Key Areas: The patents included 2,590 patents for electric motors, 2,020 for power control units (PCUs), and 7,550 for system controls.
• Timeline: The royalty-free licensing offer runs through the end of 2030.
• Continued Growth: As of April 2026, reports indicate a sustained filing rate of over 160 new patents per year, focusing on software-defined optimizations.
• Why Open Patents: The move to provide royalty-free access was intended to promote the industry-wide adoption of electrified vehicles.

In addition to hybrid patents, the company has heavily invested in fuel cell technology, with a significant portfolio of over 8,000 patents related to fuel cell vehicles (FCEVs).