Hybrid Vehicles
A hybrid vehicle is named thus because it mixes two engine types, usually a gasoline engine and an electric motor, to provide a mix of the benefits of each type of propulsion.
One of the biggest benefits that hybrids provide is greatly improved gas mileage. The average gas mileage in the U.S. today is 20-25 miles per gallon. That's dismal - it's lower today than it was in the mid-1980s! Commercial hybrids, however, get anywhere from 40 to 80 miles per gallon.
In the Easy Breathers video, Grid Guy shows Ahmad how he could save $350 by tuning up his old car so that it gets better gas mileage. Well, Grid Guy was talking about squeezing 20.6 miles per gallon out of a car that was only getting 15.2mpg. That's an improvement of only about 5 miles per gallon, yet it meant big savings. Imagine how much people save when they trade their old car for a Hybrid and get an improvement of anywhere between 20 and 60 miles per gallon!! Not only is that thousands of dollars cheaper for the motorist, but better fuel efficiency means less pollution and less waste of precious, dwindling oil reserves across the globe.
What's under the hood?
Gas-electric hybrids are generally constructed by fitting an electric motor alongside the gasoline engine in a conventional vehicle. This allows manufacturers to use existing vehicles in their factories to introduce new technologies. That's cheaper and less risky for them, and more appealing to many cautious motorists who are interested in new technologies but can't take the chance on paying a lot of money for something that they've never tried before.
On the road today: the Prius and the Insight
The first hybrid design was actually developed in 1905. Isn't it frustrating to learn how long it takes to get anything done around here?! There are two commercial hybrids on the road today - you've probably already seen them! One is the Toyota Prius, introduced in the U.S. in early 2000, and the other is the Honda Insight, introduced in late 1999. The Prius is a 4-door compact car with the body of the Toyota Echo. The Insight is a 2-door sporty sub-compact car, with a body style that began with the Honda CRX but really morphed from there. Both cost right at $20,000 - which sounds like a lot, but plenty of conventional small cars (the VW Beetle, the Subaru Impreza WRX) cost $20,000 or more. And don't forget that fuel costs for hybrids are a lot less than for most other cars.
Tax credit offered on hybrid car purchases
Purchasers of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles will now qualify for a $2,000 tax deduction through December 2003, announced the Internal Revenue Service. People who purchase Toyota's Prius or Honda's Insight or Civic will qualify for a clean-vehicle tax deduction, which would decrease by $500 each year until the credit expires in 2007, unless Congress chooses to extend it. The credit will be extended to other car manufacturers when they introduce alternative-fuel vehicles. Ford is currently developing a hybrid version of its Escape SUV for release in 2004 and General Motors and Chrysler are working on development of hybrid models.
Quiet! and clean
Both the Prius and the Insight are really quiet. If you've seen the video, you might remember Ray yelling at a driver, "Yo, dude, turn on your engine!" and Danni replying, "It IS on, Eco-Boy, it's a hybrid!" The car in question was a Toyota Prius cruising past. Hybrids are quiet mainly because their gas engines are smaller than most other gas-powered cars (gas engines are noisy buggers), and because their gas engine isn't running all the time. When you're driving a hybrid and you pull up to a stop light, the car actually turns itself off instead of sitting there idling. Idling is one of the times when the car wastes a lot of gas and produces a lot of pollution, so using the electric motor to keep the car ready to roll at stoplights is a great idea. When the light goes green and you touch the gas, the electric motor propels you forward, and then you feel the gas engine quietly purr to life in a few seconds.
This gas engine/electric motor trading game is what really makes hybrids so fuel-efficient. The more time the car spends running on the electric motor instead of the gas engine, the more miles you get out of a tank of gas. Conversely, when the gas engine is running, it charges the batteries, so you don't have to plug in a hybrid or worry about being stranded because of the batteries running out of power. To squeeze even more efficiency out of those batteries, Hybrids also employ a technology called regenerative braking. With regenerative braking (aka "re-gen braking), anytime you use the brakes, the friction produced (which is energy, right?) is re-captured and stored in the batteries. It's all about efficiency.
Tell me more
There's lots more to tell about hybrids - their engineering, performance, the future of the technology... And here are some good places to start finding that information:
HowStuffWorks.com tells you how the hybrid-electric car works: http://www.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-car.htm
The Department of Energy, of course, is in on the act. In addition to explaining hybrids, this HEV (hybrid-electric vehicle) site shows you the latest models and tells you how to buy a hybrid at your local dealership. http://www.ott.doe.gov/hev/hev.html
The ultimate hybrid prototype is the Hypercar - check out the Easy Breathers Hypercar page.
Bridging the gap
Hybrids, to many people, are an effective bridging technology between the old (gasoline/diesel internal combustion engines) and the new (electrics, fuel cell vehicles, etc.). Now that you understand hybrids, check out the other technologies that they may lead to on the Innovative Technologies page. To refresh your memory on conventional technologies, visit the Vehicles and the Pollution they Produce page.
