Hybrid Cars

There’s a saying that you can’t have your cake and eat it too, but in the case of Hybrid vehicles, this definitely is not true. We are all aware that there are concerns about our global, insatiable thirst for fossil fuels (to run our cars primarily), and that we are harming the environment with the resulting emissions. Hybrid vehicles are here to answer that call.

Purely electric cars never really caught on because they required massive batteries that required long charging periods, and they had a limited range which prevented drivers from going any great distance. They were also not particularly powerful, and definitely not sexy. Hybrid cars have been cleverly designed to marry traditional internal combustion engines with electric engines, and although details differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, they all work in pretty much the same way. The first vehicles to appear with Hybrid drive trains were the Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius. GM now also produces hybrid trucks, and all the other major manufacturers all have plans to introduce hybrid models in the next year or two.

The “cake” is that these vehicles get exceptional gas mileage; the “eat it too” is that they are very low emission vehicles, and they are also quite sporty and powerful. Here is how it works: Hybrids tend to work as electric cars in the city for stop and start driving tasks, and the combustion engine starts only when the battery is getting depleted, or when extra acceleration is needed. The nice thing about Hybrids is that you can benefit from the electric motor power and the internal combustion power simultaneously when needed. Another interesting feature of Hybrids is that they don’t idle when stopped, as traditional cars do. This is a great “eat it too” feature of the cars. I found one government website that estimates that 2/3rds of US vehicles are driven in urban areas, and time spent idling is 18% of total urban drive time. The US department of Energy estimates that if all vehicles were shut off when they normally idle, the US would save 20 billion gallons of oil per year; this also would translate to an annual savings per car/owner of $300 per year in gas costs. It would also contribute to reduced emissions, a big concern right now.

Another interesting feature of the Hybrid cars is the regenerative braking systems they employ. Traditional brakes use friction brakes, which produce heat energy, and this heat energy is merely dissipated into the atmosphere and not captured or utilized in any way. Regenerative brakes, however, utilize the electric motors that drive each individual wheel, and when braking is needed they become generators; the resulting energy is captured and used to charge the battery cells in the vehicle. How smart is that?

Hybrid cars cost about $2000 more than their combustion counterparts, but the savings in fuel costs can be recovered within 5 years, so the manufacturers claim. Many countries will pay a tax credit to Hybrid owners (see http://www.hybridcars.com/tax-deductions-credits.html for more info), so here again we can have our cake and eat it too.

There are a few celebrities that have become hybrid owners - They include Ted Danson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Billy Crystal, Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Donny Osmond, among others. I have noticed some taxi companies are starting to use Hybrids for cabs in Vancouver. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hybrid becomes the de facto standard in the next decade or so. Soon we all will be driving them.