A Look Inside Porsche’s Massive New Taycan Factory

The new Taycan is Porsche AG’s first electric car—but it’s not the first one made by someone with the name Porsche.

That distinction goes to the electric contraption Ferdinand Porsche built in 1898. His Egger-Lohner C.2 Phaeton was powered by an octagonal electric motor and had a top speed of 25 km/h (16 mph). The Lohner-Porsche Electromobile, a continuation of the Phaeton, made its debut at the Paris Auto Expo in 1900, followed by his Semper Vivus hybrid car later that year. Despite early success, however, the vehicles’ low power output, coupled with a lack of electric infrastructure, doomed those early experiments.