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Hybrid cars
Some hybrid cars are among the most fuel efficient cars available on the market at present. Hybrid cars available in New Zealand are the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid. See for instance: http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/cars
The first modern-day petrol-electric hybrid hit the market in 1999. However, the concept has been around for a long time. The Woods Motor Vehicle Company of Chicago introduced its Dual Power car in 1916, which could operate on electric power only, on gasoline only, or on both simultaneously.
Hybrid cars drive almost exactly like regular cars but have an electric motor and battery as well as a smaller petrol engine. The electric motor supplements the petrol engines as much as possible. Sometimes the petrol engine is turned off completely.
The battery running the motor is charged up when the driver brakes. This is called “regenerative braking”. Regenerative braking makes use of the fact that an electric motor can also act as a generator that can produce electricity. During braking, the hybrid car’s electric motor is switched over to act as a generator which produces a braking effect or load (because the generator has to do work to produce electricity) as well as electricity that is fed into the battery.
Small hybrid cars can use as little as 4.5 litres to go 100 km. Hybrid SUVs are now entering the market but these are considerably less efficient because the engines are more powerful and the cars are heavier.
Over 40 different hybrid car models are expected to be on sale around the world by 2012. These will include diesel-electric hybrids and plug-in hybrids which have larger batteries which can be recharged by plugging them into a wall socket. Plug-in hybrids will make even less use of their petrol or diesel engines.
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