85,000 were issued to hybrids. Prius and Honda Civic and others.
Since 2004, hybrid owners with a special permit were allowed entry into California’s High-Occupancy-Vehicle (HOV) lanes even when driving alone.
The special yellow key-shaped decals that denoted access quickly became a must-have for traffic-weary hybrid owners, and added up to $1,500 to the resale value of the hybrid that sported one against its more mundane siblings.
Jacob Lohner & Co in Vienna, Austria produced electric cars from 1898 to 1906. Ferdinand Porsche, one of Lohner´s employees developed a drive system based on fitting an electric motor to each front wheel without transmissions (hub mounted). Vehicles of this type were known as Lohner-Porsches
Lohner produced a number of hybrid petrol- electric cars. That is, with a gasoline US engine driving a generator to produce the electricity to drive the electric motors.
While the Lohner-Porsche technology was reliable, it was not competitive with conventional petrol-engined cars. Production costs where higher. Production of Hybrid cars seized in 1906 although Lohner produced Lohner-Stoll trolley buses for several years on. Above is a recreation, and is named "Semper Vivus" and is currently on display at the Porshe museum in Stuttgart http://www.porsche.com/usa/aboutporsche/pressreleases/pcna/?lang=none&pool=international-de&id=2011-04-26 between May 10 2011 and June 13 2011
