As part of its advanced battery program in the 1970s, Exxon had developed electric motor technology to be used in a hybrid-gas electric vehicle. In 1978, the EEI automotive team created a brochure that showed off to automakers the hybrid prototype Exxon had built with its ACS technology: a Chrysler Cordoba, which got 27 miles per gallon. That was the mileage target that the Environmental Protection Agency required of vehicles by 1985.
At the time, the American auto industry grappled with the tough new mileage standards they feared could make their gas guzzlers obsolete.
“Detroit, your future can be both as big and as small as America wants it to be,” the brochure’s cover read.
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