Hybrid Cars, Hybrid Trucks, Hybrid Vans and Hybrid Motorcycles

Plug-In hybrid cars , such as the Tesla Roadster and Chevy Volt , generating a lot of interest. This article explores why plugin hybrid cars are so exciting.

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While gas prices have plummeted due to investors short-selling oil to get some liquidity during the current financial crisis, they’re still over a dollar per gallon higher than they were this time last year. They’re likely to fluctuate between $2.70 and $4.15 per gallon over the next few years, though the promise of developing new sources of oil domestically will smooth out some of those bumps in the road.

Whether it’s for pure economic reasons, the desire to own a piece of good engineering, or the desire to save the environment, hybrid cars have taken a strong place in the American auto market , driven largely by the availability of industrial grade lithium ion batteries .

The financial appeal of electric power for vehicles is strong. With most of the electricity in the United States derived from coal or gas plants, it’s significantly cheaper per passenger mile when it can be used at all; powering your car on electricity gives a cost per mile that’s broadly equivalent to paying for $0.80 per gallon gasoline.

The major drawback of plug-in hybrid cars has been energy density in the hybrid battery system. The first generation hybrid trucks and hybrid cars used nickel cadmium batteries, which are rechargeable, but don’t store a lot of power. They’re also more expensive to dispose of after the car is no longer useful. Their chief advantage was that they were cheap, and by comparison to lead-acid cells, lightweight.

Lithium ion batteries have changed that considerably – there isn’t a hybrid truck or hybrid car on the road that isn’t using them. What has changed is that there are now after market conversion kits to both increase battery capacity, and allow you to plug your car in overnight to recharge them. These kits get rid of a lot of cargo space for the ability to cruise further off of battery power alone, and they still have a gasoline motor powering the car’s forward movement directly.

The next step in plug in hybrid vehicles is exemplified by the Chevy Volt , which uses electrical motors in each wheel to power the car; this frees up the space and mass otherwise taken up by the steering column and transmission system for more battery space. The second place where this pays off is that the gasoline engine just powers a generator to feed the battery because the engine doesn’t need to provide locomotive force to the entire vehicle, it can be tuned for greater efficiency. Even better, the Volt has nearly a 60-mile range from the battery pack alone; if your daily commute is less than 60 miles round trip, the Volt may not use any gas at all.

Powering your car from a plug in current is also better for the environment; it’s much easier to clean emissions from one source (an industrial power plant) and do it at large scales with greater efficiency, than to try and scrub the emissions (from catalytic converters to CO2) from thousands of cars. Indeed, with modern CO2 sequestering techniques, many coal plants are getting closer and closer to zero emissions entirely.

The next step in electric transportation is the all-electric vehicle; the only one on the market right now is the Tesla Roadster , which runs a hefty $100,000 or more. It runs entirely off stored electricity, with a cruising range of a bit over 130 miles between charges.

Recommended Reading

• Chevrolet Volt
• Tesla Roadster
  
• Hybrid Car Batteries

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