How does a hybrid car work?
A hybrid car works by combining two smaller engines to produce the power of a larger engine. Usually, it’s a gas engine and an electric engine. For instance, in the Toyota Prius it’s currently a 106 horsepower I-4 engine combined with a 67 horsepower electric engine to produce a 173 horsepower car, about the same as any other I-4 engine or a small 6-Cylinder engine. In the near future, Volkswagen is said to be introducing a new diesel/electric hybrid which will acheive close to 80 miles per gallon and can be used in a standard small car, including the Beetle, Golf, and Jetta. To improve fuel mileage and exhaust emissions, the electric engine does the work of starting the car and getting it going from a complete stop. In some hybrids, the electric engine is active all the way up to 35 miles per hour. One the vehicle is moving, the gas engine starts up and gives the car more power in addition to recharging the electric motor’s batteries.
There are a couple of reasons why a hybrid car works as well as it does. 1) A hybrid car has a very small gasoline engine. This allows for increased efficiency and reduced weight. The smaller engine is able to maintain the heat that it produces better then a larger one, and is therefore able to produce more power per gallon of gasoline. Also, due to its light weight it reduces the total weight of the car and that means that less power is needed to move the car. 2) Recover energy and store it in the battery – Whenever you step on the brake pedal in your car, you are removing energy from the car. The faster a car is going, the more kinetic energy it has. The brakes of a car remove this energy and dissipate it in the form of heat. A hybrid car can capture some of this energy and store it in the battery to use later. It does this by using “regenerative braking.” That is, instead of just using the brakes to stop the car, the electric motor that drives the hybrid can also slow the car. In th
