After only a few years at Bella Egger & Co., Porsche—whose supervisors were thoroughly impressed by his technological skills—was promoted from an employee to a management position.
The year 1897 was full of milestones for Porsche. That year, he built an electric wheel-hub motor, the concept for which had been developed by American inventor Wellington Adams more than a decade earlier; raced his wheel-hub motor in Vienna; and began working in the newly created Electric Car Department at Hofwagenfabrik Jacob Lohner & Co., a Vienna-based company belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Army's joint Imperial and Royal Army, or k.u.k. in 1898, Porsche developed the Egger-Lohner electric vehicle C.2 Phaeton (also known as the P1), was the first electric car.