Phi 207 - Should Cars Be More Efficient?

Should Cars be more efficient?

Betsy Neighbors

PHI 207

Lee Ott

July 29, 2011

The development of fuel efficient cars was primarily in response to the OPEC oil

crisis of the nineteen-seventies and the dramatic rise in gasoline prices for American

motorists. Centuries ago, Americans drove gas guzzling cars. The price of gasoline was cheap and consumers were not interested in purchasing fuel efficient cars, so automakers did not produce fuel efficient cars. But today gas prices have skyrocketed; fuel efficient cars have become a necessity.

New concerns about the threat of global warming, the shortage of crude oil, and the stringent emission standard stimulate automobile manufactures to provide customers with fuel saving, environment-friendly, and affordable vehicles without sacrificing performance, safety, and reliability. Hybrid electric vehicles combined with more than one power source are assumed to be one of the most promising alternatives to engine only vehicles (Qiang, Zhong, Mao, Yang, Zhuo, 2007).

Hybrid electric vehicles combined with more than one power source offer additional flexibility to improve the fuel economy and to reduce pollutant emissions. The dynamic programming based supervisory presented here investigates the fuel-economy improvement and emissions of nitrogen oxides for a state of charge sustaining parallel HEV (Dave, 2009).

Hybrid cars are considered to be the car of tomorrow. Because of the benefits it can give you, you will definitely want to get one for your own. In fact, more and more are now considering selling their conventional car and purchase a hybrid car. So why is it that more and more people prefer getting a hybrid car instead of a conventional car even if hybrid car retail prices are far more expensive (Dave, 2009)?

The answer to this is that these people are thinking of the long term benefits that a hybrid car can give. With a hybrid car, you can cut fuel consumption in half compared to conventional cars. Hybrid cars will be able to give you maximum fuel efficiency. It will be able to give you far better mileage to the gallon. A hybrid car can get more than sixty miles to the gallon of gasoline.

This is because hybrid cars run on two engines. One is the conventional internal combustion engine that you will find in conventional cars and the other is the electric motor and batteries. Hybrid cars are basically cars that combine electric energy and gasoline energy. Combining these two to power your car, it will run quieter, cleaner, and more efficient than conventional cars (Dave, 2009).

Hybrid cars will save money from tax breaks imposed by the United States government to hybrid car users and buyers; therefore if you own a hybrid car, you will be able to enjoy tax breaks. You also will be able to enjoy free parking and other incentives that the government imposed on hybrid car owners.

Along