A hybrid car: the best of two worlds
If you’ve been following the news lately, you’ve no doubt noticed the growing interest in hybrid cars. What is all this?
After nearly 100 years on the road, the combustion engine is slowly becoming a veteran. Environmental pollution and its unlimited thirst for fuel cause problems from smog to global warming. Also, conventional motors actually become more and more inefficient as they grow in size. Most cars use at most a third of the energy present in the fuel, the rest is lost as heat and sound.
But only if gasoline costs much more than $3 a gallon will traditional cars be seen as too thirsty, apart from the fact that they dirty the environment. But cleaner electric technology, as in electric vehicles, is also not the ideal solution. And hydrogen or gas cells are not yet fully developed. Here the hybrid car has its window of opportunity: a new automotive technology, which unites the best of two worlds: a gasoline engine and an electric one.
The results?
The most pollution-free motor vehicle offered to date.
Hybrid technology manages to do this by connecting a small gasoline engine with a high-torque electric motor and battery. And you can in this way reduce fuel consumption and have a lower pollution factor.
In fact, some hybrid vehicles produce 50% less emissions than your conventional car. While this is actually pretty cool, you have to admit that two power supplies under the hood are more complicated, more prone to errors, and might even sound a bit wasteful.
But if this will allow almost any driver to save 50% on gas and cut emissions by a third, it certainly can’t be all wrong. And best of all, these hybrid cars, in the short time they’ve been on the market, have also proven to be very roadworthy vehicles.
Especially in the US, where the environment is becoming increasingly polluted, hybrid vehicles are playing an increasingly important role, especially in California, where “Governor” Arnold Schwarzenegger has opted for strict environmental protection guidelines .
For this reason, no doubt, we may also be seeing something of a hybrid car craze in Hollywood right now. During the 2005 Academy Awards, the most prestigious way to travel was not the long black limousine, but a hybrid car, supposedly showcasing the environmental awareness of celebrities.
On the other hand, it can also be assumed that the above phenomenon was a way of showing one’s status, since hybrid cars were quite rare and expensive at the time. Celebrities seen arriving in various hybrid cars included Cameron Diaz, Robin Williams, Harrison Ford, and (surprise, surprise) Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon.