
Understandably, in a world accustomed to driving petrol and diesel cars, the Prius’ revolutionary petrol and electric power caused quite a stir. Up until this point, manufacturers had endeavoured for decades to harness the two energy sources into cars – and for decades they’d failed. In 1997 however, Toyota were the first to successfully overcome the many engineering challenges and subsequently launched the Prius, the world’s first mass market hybrid.