Drive by any car lot in
United States and ask to see latest hybrid car models. Don’t be stupefied if eight out of ten tell you that they can’t seem to keep them on lot—that they’re just selling too fast! There is reasoning behind hype: consumers believe in one (or all) of three things, that they’re going to be getting a better deal once gas prices hit $2.50 a gallon, that they’re not sacrificing performance and that they’re helping environment. Let’s first take a look at how these cars are put together. First, we have to understand concept of “hybrid”. A hybrid car might be defined as any vehicle that uses two or more sources of energy to propel itself. Seems simple enough. Hybrid machinery is all around us in form of diesel-electric, such as city buses, and nuclear-electric, such as those used on many US submarines. So, idea and technology have been around awhile—it’s just now that another energy scare like that of 1970s, that we start becoming resourceful and a little ingenious. Hybrid power is on up-rise (and in-demand) only because two different types of propulsion possibilities (gasoline/diesel and electric) standing alone have proven an ineffective means to get both power and efficiency in one package. But, working together, there is promise.
A hybrid car, in modern terminology, is usually referring to any car that has a combination of an electric and a gasoline (or diesel) motors. These cars use kinetic energy (referred to as regenerative breaking), absorbed by your breaks when you slow down to a stop, to recharge batteries that in turn push electric motor. All of this is combined into one finely tuned schematic—the result being power to transmission and propulsion power (i.e. wheel movement).
All hybrids contain a gasoline engine, an electric engine, a generator (mostly on series hybrids), fuel storage container, batteries and a transmission.
There are basically two different types of hybrid engines. The first is a parallel hybrid. This sort of hybrid actually contains both a gasoline and electric motor that both operate independently to propel car forward. It’s designed to have two power sources working with one goal in mind. In many ways, they are still “connected”.
The second hybrid is often referred to as a series hybrid. In a series hybrid, gas or diesel powered engine doesn’t connect to transmission directly, meaning that it doesn’t actually propel car by itself. It actually works indirectly, powering a generator, which in turn (controlled by computer monitoring systems) either feeds power to batteries or directly feeds power to an electric motor that connects to transmission.
As stated above, hybrid buyers are looking for combination (and compromise) of power and energy that these cars seem to provide. Many gas-powered cars have a lot of horsepower. This is useful for modern driving experiences. No one wants to be doing minimum 45 mph on interstate and stopping to “refuel,” as with purely electric motors. Plus, there’s no need to feel like you should have placed your slow-moving reflective magnet on trunk. However, many gas-powered cars are truly “wasteful” resources because out of those 175 horses, you’ll only have to use less than half that power for everyday driving. We don’t even have to get into harmful environmental factors of pure gasoline engines. We are just now starting to see results of our apathetic attitudes on this subject.
