Hybrid Vehicles

Hybrid Vehicles are alternatives to conventional gasoline and electric cars.

There are many benefits of electric hybrid vehicles and there are many choices of electric hybrid vehicles to choose from.

What are hybrid vehicles?

The hybrid vehicles are new breeds of cars that make use of a combination of

• on-board rechargeable energy storage systems (or RESS, for short), and

• a power source such as fuel which can together propel the car forward.

The most common hybrid vehicles

Toyota Prius hybrid cars

The most common form of a hybrid vehicle is the one that uses internal combustion engines coupled with electric batteries to power its electric motors. The new hybrid cars such as the TOYOTA PRIUS increase the charge of its electric batteries through the use of capture of kinetic energy via regenerative braking. Along with this form of capturing of kinetic energy the TOYOTA PRIUS hybrid electric car can, when simply cruising, generate electricity from the combustion engine through spinning of a generator that very often is a second electric motor and so recharges the battery and even directly feeds power to the motor, itself.

Lohner-Porsche electric hybrid cars

It was a German named Ferdinand Porsche who in 1898 designed the Lohner-Porsche carriage which was a series hybrid vehicle that could have its internal combustion engine spins a generator to power the four-wheeled mounted electric motor. This was indeed a path breaking invention that was showcased at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris and its 56 kmph speed broke several Austrian speed records and a total of 300 such electric hybrid vehicles were sold.

What are the benefits of hybrid vehicles?

At present some of the most fuel efficient are electric hybrid vehicles because they can be configured in a number of different ways to meet different objectives. The advantage that electric hybrid vehicles enjoy is that they can combine the best of fuel driven engines with the electric motor and thus make major improvements in fuel economy without any attenuation in performance or driving range. The electric hybrid vehicle functions much the same as an internal combustion engine but can convert energy that normally gets wasted while coasting and braking into electricity that is then stored in the battery until called for by the electric motor, again.

There are also some electric hybrid vehicles that automatically shut off the motor when the vehicle stops and can then automatically restart upon pressing the accelerator and so prevents energy from being wasted when the vehicle is idling. There is also no need to plug the batteries to an external source of electricity as is required by conventional electric motors because, due to regenerative braking as well as conventional gasoline are able to supply the electric hybrid vehicle’s complete energy requirements.