Ferdinand Porsche (3 September 1875 – 30 January 1951) was an Austrian-German automotive engineer and founder of the Porsche AG. He is best known for creating the first gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle (Lohner-Porsche), the Volkswagen Beetle, the Auto Union racing cars, the Mercedes-Benz SS/SSK, and several other important developments and Porsche automobiles.
An important contributor to the war effort of Nazi Germany during World War II, Porsche was involved in the production of advanced tanks such as the VK 45.01 (P), the Elefant (initially called "Ferdinand") self-propelled gun, and the Panzer VIII Maus super-heavy tank, as well as other weapon systems, including the V-1 flying bomb. Porsche was a member of the Nazi Party and an honorary Oberführer of the Allgemeine SS. He was a recipient of the German National Prize for Art and Science, the SS-Ehrenring and the War Merit Cross.
Porsche was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1996 and was named the Car Engineer of the Century in 1999.
Ferdinand Porsche was born to Anna Porsche (née Ehrlich) and Anton Porsche, in Maffersdorf (Vratislavice nad Nisou) in northern Bohemia, part of Austria-Hungary at that time, and today part of the Czech Republic. Ferdinand was his parents' third child. His father was a master panel-beater.
Ferdinand showed a great aptitude for technology and was especially intrigued by electricity from a young age. He was already attending classes at the Imperial Polytechnical College in nearby Reichenberg (Czech: Liberec), some 5 km (3 mi) from his home, at night, while still helping his father in his mechanical shop by day. Thanks to a referral, Porsche landed a job with the Béla Egger & Co. Electrical company in Vienna (later Brown Boveri, now ABB), and moved there in 1893, at age 18. While working in Vienna, he enrolled as a part-time student at what is now the Vienna University of Technology, and went there whenever he could after work. Besides attending classes there, Porsche did not complete any formal engineering education. During his five years with Béla Egger, he built their first electric wheel-hub motor, the concept for which had been developed by American inventor Wellington Adams, and Porsche also raced it, in 1897.
After the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I, he chose Czechoslovak citizenship. In 1934, either Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels made Porsche a naturalized German citizen.
In 1897 or 1898, Porsche joined the Vienna-based factory Jakob Lohner & Company, which produced coaches for Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria as well as for the monarchs of the UK, Sweden, and Romania. Jakob Lohner had begun construction of automobiles in 1896 under Ludwig Lohner in the trans-Danubian suburb of Floridsdorf. Their first design — unveiled in Vienna, Austria, on 26 June 1898 - was the Egger-Lohner vehicle (also referred to as the C.2 Phaeton).
The Egger-Lohner was a carriage-like car driven by two electric motors within the front wheel hubs, powered by batteries. This drivetrain 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. W. Hart in 1900. In December that year, the car was displayed at the Paris World Exhibition under the name La Toujours Contente (the always happy one), a pun on the 1899 speed record setting La Jamais Contente. Even though this one-off vehicle had been commissioned for racing and record-breaking, its 1,800 kg (4,000 lb) of lead-acid batteries was a severe shortcoming. Though it "showed wonderful speed when it was allowed to sprint",, the weight of the batteries rendered it slow to climb hills. It also suffered from a limited range due to limited battery life.
Still employed by Lohner, Porsche introduced the "Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid" in 1901: 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 300 Lohner-Porsche chassis were sold up to 1906, 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.
The vehicles achieved speeds of up to 56 kilometres per hour (35 mph), broke several Austrian speed records, and also won the Exelberg Rally in 1901, with Porsche himself driving a front-wheel drive hybrid. It was later upgraded with more powerful engines from Daimler and Panhard, which proved to be enough to gain more speed records. In 1905, Porsche was awarded the Pötting prize as Austria's most outstanding automotive engineer.
In 1902, he was drafted into military service. He served as a chauffeur to Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, whose assassination in 1914 is credited with contributing to the start of WWI.
1903 he married Aloisia Johanna Kaes. They had two children together. While detailed documentation of her personal life and activities is limited, it is likely that, as was customary for women of her social and historical context, she managed the household and cared for their children. Such domestic and care work would have provided stability that enabled her husband to pursue his professional and personal endeavors. Although specific evidence of her contributions is scarce, her role reflects the broader pattern of women’s unpaid labor supporting family and career in her era.
In 1906, Austro-Daimler recruited Ferdinand Porsche as their chief designer. Porsche's best-known Austro-Daimler car was designed for the Prince Henry Trial in 1910, named after Wilhelm II's younger brother Prince Heinrich of Prussia. Examples of this streamlined, 85 horsepower (63 kW) car won the first three places, and the car is still better known by the nickname "Prince Henry" than by its model name "Modell 27/80". He also created a 30 horsepower model called the Maja, named after Mercedes Jellinek's younger sister, Andrée Maja (or Maia) Jellinek.
Porsche had advanced to managing director by 1916 and received an honorary doctorate from the Vienna University of Technology in 1916: the title "Dr. Ing. h.c." is an abbreviation of "Doktor Ingenieur Honoris Causa". Porsche successfully continued to construct racing cars, winning 43 out of 53 races with his 1922 design. In 1923, Porsche left Austro-Daimler after differences ensued about the future direction of car development.
A few months later, Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft hired Porsche to serve as Technical Director in Stuttgart, Germany, which was already a major center for the German automotive industry. In 1924, he received another honorary doctorate from the Stuttgart Technical University for his work at Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft in Stuttgart and was later given the honorary title of Professor. While at Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft he came up with several very successful race car designs. The series of models equipped with superchargers that culminated in the Mercedes-Benz SSK dominated its class of motor racing in the 1920s.
In 1926, Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie merged into Daimler-Benz, with their joint products beginning to be called Mercedes-Benz. However, Porsche's idea for a small, lightweight Mercedes-Benz car was not popular with Daimler-Benz's board. He left in 1929 for Steyr Automobile, but due to the Great Depression, Porsche ended up being made redundant.
In April 1931, Porsche returned to Stuttgart and founded his consulting firm Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche GmbH, Konstruktionen und Beratungen für Motoren und Fahrzeugbau (designs and consulting services for motors and vehicles). With financial backing from his son-in-law, the Austrian attorney Anton Piëch, and Adolf Rosenberger, Porsche successfully recruited several former co-workers he had befriended at his former places of employment, including Karl Rabe, Erwin Komenda, Franz Xaver Reimspiess, and his son, Ferry Porsche.