With rising gas prices, manufacturers has been trying to help consumers with a lot alternatives. There has been rumors of water cars, choking engines etc. The most succesful so far is Hybrid cars. What are hybrids? Hybrids are machines that run on electricity such as a MO-ped, submarines etc. A Hyrbid car, which are usually gas-electric, can run on both gas and electric power. A gas powered car runs transmission by fuels from its tank while electric vehicles has batteries that runs the transmission and the transmission runs the wheels. There are three minimun requirements for a car to be useful to humans. First is it should drive atleast 300 miles before refueling. Second, it shall has the capacity to be refuled quickly and easy. Lastly keep up with traffice and different roads. All of these three can be achieved by a gas powered machine but can create a large volume of pollution. A electric car on the other hand, creates no pollution but can hardly go up to 50 miles per hour. The hybrid is a compromise of both strategies, it tries to decrease consumption of gas while having a long drive with less harm to the environment.
Gasoline-electric hybrid cars contain the following parts:
- Gasoline engine - The hybrid car has a gasoline engine much like the one you will find on most cars. However, the engine on a
hybrid is smaller and uses advanced technologies to reduce emissions
and increase efficiency.
- Fuel tank - The fuel tank
in a hybrid is the energy storage device for the gasoline engine.
Gasoline has a much higher energy density than batteries do. For
example, it takes about 1,000 pounds of batteries to store as much
energy as 1 gallon (7 pounds) of gasoline.
- Electric motor - The electric motor
on a hybrid car is very sophisticated. Advanced electronics allow it to
act as a motor as well as a generator. For example, when it needs to,
it can draw energy from the batteries to accelerate the car. But acting
as a generator, it can slow the car down and return energy to the
batteries.
- Generator - The generator is similar to an electric motor, but it acts only to produce electrical
power. It is used mostly on series hybrids (see below).
- Batteries - The batteries in a hybrid car are the energy storage device for the electric motor.
Unlike the gasoline in the fuel tank, which can only power the gasoline
engine, the electric motor on a hybrid car can put energy into the
batteries as well as draw energy from them.
- Transmission - The transmission on a hybrid car performs the same basic function as the transmission on a conventional car. Some hybrids, like the Honda Insight, have conventional transmissions. Others, like the Toyota Prius, have radically different ones, which we'll talk about later.
Autopartswarehouse notes:
Hybrids have two kind a parallel hybrid an Series Hybrid. A Parallel has a fuel tank that can supply gasoline to the engine and batteries for electric motor. On the other hand a Series Hybrid has a gasoline engine that turns a generator, which can either charge the batteries or power an electric motor that drives the transmission.