The fuel mixture was not compressed before ignition (a system invented in 1801 by Philippe LeBon who developed the use of illuminating gas to light Paris), and the engine was quiet but inefficient,[4] with a power stroke at each end of the cylinder.

[5] In 1863, the Hippomobile, with a coal gas fueled, one cylinder, internal combustion engine, made a test drive from Paris to Joinville-le-Pont, covering 18 km in 3 hours.

In 1860, Lenoir received a patent for "an air motor expanded by gas combustion" from Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, no.

[9] It successfully covered the 11 km (7 mi) from Paris to Joinville-le-Pont and back in about ninety minutes each way, an average speed less than that of a walking man (though doubtless there were breakdowns).

In 1863, he sold his patents to Compagnie parisienne de gaz and turned to motorboats instead, building the first naptha-fueled four-cycle, fueled by ligroin (heavy naptha), in 1888.

[4][3][10] Jules Verne wrote in his 1863 novel Paris in the Twentieth Century of boulevards crowded with horseless carriages, "the Lenoir machine applied to locomotion."

Other engineers, especially Nicolaus Otto, began making improvements to internal combustion technology, which soon rendered the Lenoir design obsolete.

[5] On 16 July 1900, not long before his death, Lenoir received an award from the ACF (Automobile Club de France), which was a vermeil plate with the inscription, "In recognition of his great merits as an inventor of the gas engine and builder of the first car in the world."