Since its founding, Tesla has committed to being an all-electric brand. While this has worked out quite well for the company as well as the overall adoption of electric vehicles, some industry leaders believe that hybrid powertrains are the true key to the future of automotive engineering. In fact, according to European outlet Edison, one engineering firm has even retrofitted a Tesla Model 3 with a gasoline engine to produce a hybrid version of the automaker's most popular sedan. Meet Frank Obrist, founder of the aptly named Austrian engineering firm Obrist Powertrain. Over the years, the company has worked to create alternative power plants for otherwise everyday vehicles, coining his recent ultra-efficient creations "hyper hybrids." Obrist, who once worked for father of the rotary engine Felix Wankel, birthed the project as a way to create an efficient hybrid vehicle that could out-perform a fully electric car in terms of cost and environmental impact, despite being at least partially powered by gasoline.

Don't let the name fool you—even though it sounds like some sort of supercar creation, the first version of the powertrain was stuffed into perhaps one of the plainest compact cars out there: the Chinese-manufactured Geely EC7. Soon after, a new prototype of the so-called hyper hybrid was unveiled, this time transforming a Tesla Model 3 into the Obrist Mark II. Obrist began the project by removing a number of battery packs from the Tesla's floor, saving around 840 pounds of total weight compared to the vehicle's stock form. Of course, fewer batteries means less battery-only range. The stock 50-kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery pack has been swapped for a more modest 17.3-kWh unit, meaning that its overall energy capacity is reduced by nearly two-thirds.

via Obrist