Rise in Hybrid Vehicles Technology

People from all around the world have been increasingly concerned about global warming and its adverse effects like erratic climate changes and the abrupt temperature variation. Such a time calls for some urgent and drastic steps to be taken to save earth. Hybrid technology is being touted as a viable and most trustworthy solution to the fight against pollution. Hybrid vehicles are a combination of technologies. Unlike traditional vehicles that move on a single propulsion system, hybrid vehicles are driven by the power of multiple propulsion systems. The most commonly seen or heard of hybrid vehicles today are the cars that use both gasoline and electrical energy as their power source. Certain automobile companies are also working on vehicles that would run on ethanol or plant-based oils.

You may wonder who got the brain wave to develop the first hybrid car and what led to such an innovation, an innovation that holds the promise for a relatively clean and fume-free future. However, this idea is not as new as it seems. The history of hybrid vehicles runs back to the era when inventors were struggling to switch over from steam-powered vehicles to electrically driven automobiles.

However, these experiments can best be termed as trials, the inventors could came up with just a few models that did not seem to be very practical for long-distance travel. In the twentieth century, these ideas were revived in a hope to develop automobiles that would not pollute the environment as much as the traditional gasoline and diesel propelled vehicles do. Mass-scale success of hybrid vehicles was achieved at the beginning of this century; although, it was only on the verge of the twenty-first century (1999) that the launch of a hybrid car on a commercial scale was seen, for the first time in the history of automobiles, the common man could buy and use a hybrid car.

What are these hybrid cars made of and how do they function? Typically, a hybrid car that has a gasoline based engine, uses electrical energy as an energy conserving resource. Such type of hybrid cars consists of an electric motor, batteries, a gasoline engine, a fuel tank, a generator, and a transmission mode. While gasoline is used for making the internal combustion engines (ICEs) function, the electric batteries are used for supplying power to the vehicles’ electric motors. The more recently introduced hybrid car models even convert the kinetic energy produced by the car’s engine into electric energy in order to charge the batteries.

In conclusion, hybrid cars with their relatively smaller gasoline engines, contribute towards having a pollution-free and greener environment. Further, with their sleek aerodynamic design and ultra-light materials, these vehicles can achieve power of approximately 60-90 hp. All in all, one can rest assured that hybrid vehicles are the vehicles of the future and will rule the automobile industry until the next generation of eco-friendly and fuel-efficient cars take their place.