Home

Hippomobile


Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir of Belgium built this experimental vehicle in 1862. It reached a speed of 3 kms/hour with the, or one of the, first successful internal combustion engines that ran on "Town Gas" also called Coal Gas. Town gas typically would be about 51% hydrogen, 15% carbon monoxide, 21% methane, 10% carbon dioxide and nitrogen. It was a 2 stroke engine using electric spark to ignite the gas. The earliest model ran on hydrogen generated by electrolysis from water! It was called the Hippomobile which meant horse drawn vehicle (without the horse). About 400 to 500 of the Lenoir engines were built and sold.