Woods Motor Vehicle

The Woods Motor Vehicle Company was founded on September 28, 1899, with a capitalization of $10,000,000. It was incorporated under the laws of New Jersey. It assumed the patents of the Fischer Equipment Company of Chicago and a factory at 110–120 East Twentieth Street, Chicago, with plans to upgrade another facility at 547 Wabash Avenue for another factory. Frederick Nichols of Toronto, Canada, was installed as the first president, and C.E. Woods was installed as one of the company's directors. The headquarters and showroom for the Woods Motor Vehicle Company were located in an 1891 loft structure in Chicago's early Motor Row at the modern address of 1130 South Wabash Avenue, near the intersection with modern Roosevelt Road. The building long outlived the Woods Motor Vehicle Company, but demolition of the historic building began in the autumn of 2024. == Early hybrid ==

At $2,700, the Dual Power Model 44 coupe of 1911 to 1918 had a four-cylinder internal combustion engine as well as electric power. Below , the car was electric powered, and above it the conventional engine took over to take the vehicle to a maximum of around . It is today considered a historic hybrid electric vehicle. Some sources wrongly state that the Woods Dual Power car manufactured by the Woods Motor Vehicle Company in Chicago also used the Entz transmission. The Woods Dual Power had a drive-train based on Roland Fend's patent (), using a clutch between the gas engine and the electric motor, allowing the engine to also drive the car through the armature shaft of the motor, which itself was connected to the driveshaft. The Woods car was similar in many ways to today's hybrids. It used both a gasoline engine and an electric motor to propel the wheels, had regenerative braking to recharge the less cumbersome batteries, and in some circumstances, the car could charge the batteries while running on gasoline. == See also ==