When the term hybrid vehicle is used, it most often refers to a Petroleum electric hybrid vehicle. These encompass such vehicles as the Toyota Prius, Toyota Camry Hybrid, Ford Escape Hybrid, Honda Insight and others. A petroleum-electric hybrid most commonly uses internal combustion engines (generally gasoline or Diesel engines, powered by a variety of fuels) and electric batteries to power electric motors. There are many types of petroleum-electric hybrid drivetrains from Full hybrid to Mild hybrid which offer varying advantages and disadvantages.
If you are into hybrid vehicles please check out:
http://hybridtalk.blogspot.com
6 Responses
Phoenix SUT and Tesla’s new 4 door sedan with
NO OIL or GAS is a much better choice but
yes a Hybrid of any kind is better than a gas equivalent.
yea to much but yes
surprisingly, theyre really not that good for the environment due to the fact that theyre so hard to make and dispose of. Better than most cars, but night and day? not really.
Depends on where you drive, city driving will show a huge advantage with a hybrid utilizing regenerative braking. Freeway driving due to the lack of braking will show little if any improvement over a standard vehicle. Also keep in mind that as things stand today a hybrid car’s costs far outweigh its potential fuel savings over a reasonable lifetime of use. If you want to help save the environment on your own dime they can be a good choice, but if your just trying to save some money they’re a poor choice. New fuel technologies such as biodiesel and Ethanol are probably better near term solutions as most existing vehicle technology can work with them without major changes to our current infrastructure and how we build/service vehicles.
Everything comes with a price!
Hybrid cars do indeed burn less fuel,but the manufacturing process that produces the batteries comes with a heavy toll.
There are a lot of nasty by-products that result from the production of batteries.Not to mention the environmental cost of disposing of these batteries when they finally go bad and need to be replaced.Sure they can be recycled,but recycling takes energy.The plant that recycles the batteries no doubt produces some form of pollution.
But what about hydrogen? Hydrogen technology also has it’s problems.To this day it takes more energy to produce hydrogen fuel than is rendered by it’s use.
Some alternative fuels are indeed better for the environment,but don’t believe the hype when they say that it’s a “clean” technology.It might be clean when it comes out of your tail pipe,but it was a dirty process to get the fuel to your tank!
Hybrid cars DO help the environment- in that they burn less gasoline (and therefore emit less CO2, SO2, OZONE, and Particulate Matter) than standard cars with internal combustion engines.
The smoky stuff you see spilling out of cars’ tailpipes is exhaust, which is comprised of compounds like CO2, carbon dioxide (a principal greenhouse gas-GLOBAL WARMER!!!), SO2, sulfur dioxide, which is poisonous and is a leading causer of ACID RAIN, and ozone. Acid rain destroys crops, soils and trees, and greatly harms wildlife and personal property. (That’s why you’re not supposed to drink the rain dripping off your roof!) Ozone is good when it’s way up at the top of the atmosphere, because it keeps out harmful radiation, but at ground level, where we breathe it in, it is incredibly toxic. Many studies have proven that ozone and particulate matter (little pieces of debris) in the air greatly increase the rates of heart attacks, strokes, asthma and DEATHS, even in short-term rises in levels.
Hybrid cars do NOT eliminate exhaust, nor are they entirely clean themselves, but they do reduce the amount of bad stuff that we’re spewing into the air.
Great question, and an important one!!