Hybrid Cars

Our everyday lives revolve around oil. Back and forth we drive, from place to place, never thinking what life without automobiles would be like. Now, more than ever this is becoming a reality. Since the mid 1960s there have been discussions of needing to find an alternative way to power cars rather than with the internal combustion engine, the engine used by gasoline powered cars. With the rising fear of pollution and global warming threatening our well being it has become a world wide effort to find alternative powered cars. On top of that all the world's oil reserves are running low and they will never refill. In order to continue to lead our normal lives alternative fuels must be discovered. Hybrid cars are a potential end to this threat of no oil. The cars of today, running on the fuels of tomorrow are being improved every day. Wu (1995) points out "someday soon, drivers will pull into a local gas station not only to fill 'er up but also plug 'er in." (p. 233). With new technology and recent popularity, hybrid cars are becoming a staple in the automobile industry.

According to Bradley Berman (2007) of The New York Times, hybrid cars seemed to burst on to the scene a little over ten years ago. In the 1990s all the major car companies were constructing their own hybrids. However, the ideas and construction for today's hybrids actually date all the way back to the late 1890's. In 1898, Ferdinand Porsche created an electric vehicle that also used a gasoline engine. The automobile was able to make trips of up to 38 miles running on nothing but electricity. The "electric carriage" was only capable of hitting about 35 miles per hour but was a huge step in technology and was the first time an energy efficient automobile had been made. However, over the next six years the electric car was promptly put on the back burner because there was the rapid growth of the American car companies. As automobiles became more prominent, so did the emissions from the fuel burning engines. This was brought to the attention of Dr. Victor Wouk, who came upon the solution of combining an electric motor powered by a battery with a gasoline powered engine used to charge the electric motor. In 1968 production halted, a successful hybrid never came out of Dr. Wouk's work. The next 20 years through the 1980s and 1990s SUVs became popular and left the hybrid talks to the grave. While all this was happening, Akihiro Wada, of the Toyota Motor Company was determined to find a successful alternative. In 1994, he passed this on to a special team of engineers handpicked by himself. Just three short years later, in 1997, Toyota unveiled the Prius as the first truly functioning electric, gasoline powered hybrid vehicle to the world. All in all, the hybrid automobile has been around for over a century.

There are two different kinds of hybrid electric cars: parallel hybrids and series hybrids. Both of these cars are not completely powered by electricity and still depend on a gasoline engine along with a small electric engine. Series hybrids are powered by the electric engine, but when the charge of the battery becomes low the gasoline powered engine kicks on. The gasoline engine is used as a generator and charges the battery of the electric engine. When the electric engine is full, the car returns to being powered by the electricity. The Escape Hybrid by Ford and the Toyota Prius are both series hybrids along with the Chevy Bolt. Parallel hybrids