The “Godfather of the Hybrid”

COURTESY CALTECH ARCHIVES

When the Toyota Prius was introduced in 1997, it was nothing short of revolutionary. As of revolutionary. As the first mass-produced hybrid electric vehicle available to consumers, it became an icon in pop culture and the auto industry. Other car manufacturers scrambled to produce their own hybrids, and celebrities bought them to signal their trendy environmental awareness.

But the Prius would not have been a success without Victor Wouk ’39, whom many consider the “godfather of the hybrid.”

Wouk was born in the Bronx in 1919. The younger brother of novelist Herman Wouk CC 1934, he followed in his brother’s footsteps and enrolled in the College to study math and physics with the hope of attending the California Institute of Technology for graduate school. While at the College, Wouk wrote for Spectator and assisted with Edwin Armstrong SEAS 1913’s research on television broadcasting.

In May 1939, Wouk was instrumental in the successful broadcast of the Columbia-Princeton baseball game, the first live sporting event televised in the United States. At the time, the Empire State Building was the only transmitting tower in the area, and there was no way to connect it with the equipment at Baker Field about nine miles away. Philosophy Hall, however, had an antenna for television research that could be used. The only problem? It pointed in the wrong direction. So Wouk volunteered to climb onto the roof to orient the antenna toward Baker Field.

“One of the faculty was up there with me, but he was down at the bottom of the slant, to relay to me how the picture was coming along,” Wouk told Caltech archivist Judith Goodstein in a 2004 oral history interview. “I stood there and rotated it until he said ‘Hey, that’s it! Leave it there!’”

After leaving his mark on that historic television event, Wouk graduated, packed up a car and embarked on a cross-country road trip to Caltech. While he originally planned to earn a master’s in electrical engineering in one year, he was redirected toward a Ph.D. researching automobiles and electricity –– the two fields that would later define his career. Wouk graduated with his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1942 and worked on various projects, like AC/DC converters, for the next two decades. It wasn’t until 1962 when cars and electricity once again sparked his interest.

Russell Feldman, one of the founders of Motorola, approached Wouk with questions about making all-electric vehicles. Feldman asked him to take a look at a few mid-century Renault Dauphines that had been outfitted with electric motors and batteries. Although Wouk concluded that the batteries did not have enough strength to power the car very far, he started thinking about how to integrate batteries into conventional, gasoline-powered cars. His hybrid dreams didn’t gel with the priorities of the decade, however. With mounting advocacy against air pollution and the passage of the landmark Clean Air Act in 1970, electric vehicle development was all the rage.

“I spoke to several organizations about hybrids, and nobody was interested,” he told Goodstein.

Wouk started a new company solely focused on developing a hybrid vehicle: Petro-Electric Motors, named by Herman. The EPA’s Federal Clean Car Incentive Program had been formed in response to the Clean Air Act, so Petro-Electric Motors put in a bid for a contract to develop a car for the program. It was awarded the contract in 1971 with the potential to recoup its investment if its car was chosen for nationwide testing.

Wouk and his colleagues secured a 1972 Buick Skylark, mainly because it had the most amount of space under the hood for Wouk to install the necessary electronics. They outfitted it with a small-yet-powerful Mazda Wankel engine and an electric motor that would help start the car and give it extra power, with the batteries regaining partial charges as the car braked.

And it worked.

The hybrid Skylark passed the EPA’s final emissions tests with flying colors. It was the only prototype from the incentive program to make it that far, as the other participants dropped out. The test results were sent to the EPA to be evaluated, but despite their success, the agency decided not to continue with the hybrid’s development.

Undeterred, Wouk and Petro-Electric Motors tried to entice commercial investors with their design, but nothing materialized. The company closed, and Wouk began consulting on various electrical engineering projects, including those focused on hybrid electric vehicles. His hybrid Skylark and the EPA’s program were essentially lost to time. In 1993, when the Clinton administration announced the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, Wouk asked officials about the Federal Clean Car Incentive Program from the ’70s. As he told archivist Goodstein in their interview, none of them had heard of it.

The Toyota Prius made its debut in Japan in 1997, utilizing the same basic principles as Wouk’s Skylark. He never stopped advocating for hybrids, and said in 2004 that he felt vindicated, as he had received apologies from colleagues who initially disagreed with his perspective.

What’s more, Wouk had the chance to sample his victory before his death in 2005: As soon as it became available in the United States, Wouk leased a white 2001 Toyota Prius.