An Introduction About Hybrid Vehicles

Solar powered cars and electric powered cars which at one time seemed to be promising alternatives to replace gasoline cars were impractical for one main reason – the lack of suitable batteries. The problems faced with electric cars be summarized as :-

• Short capacity giving a car a range of only 50 miles (80 km).
• Heavy and bulky batteries, weighing in excess of 1,000 pounds and occupying an entire trunk space.
• Slow recharge times, typically up to ten hours for a full recharge.
• Short battery life of three to four years.
• Costly replacement for spent batteries costing around USD2000 per set.

Additionally, compact electric motors can’t deliver enough horsepower to even come close to gasoline engines. They are not suited to lug around a heavy object such as a car, especially at sustained high speeds.

Hydrogen powered cars on the other hand are generously powerful, clean and deliver superb mileage. Hydrogen as an energy source is renewable, as the only by product of spent hydrogen is water (H2O), which can then by hydrolyzed to produce more hydrogen. Perhaps most important of all, hydrogen is available abundantly in the universe, translating into a cheap and unlimited source of energy – hydrogen as an energy source is a complete opposite to the limited fossil fuels occurring in the earth. However you can’t buy a hydrogen car just yet. There is one main setback – the cost of a hydrogen powered car is prohibitively expensive. The hydrogen fuel cell runs into millions of dollars, making the hydrogen powered car an impossible mission. Several hydrogen powered cars such as the Honda FCX and BMW H2R costs in excess of several million dollars per vehicle.

But the technology learnt from the alternative fuel prototypes served as a stepping-stone in developing the next generation of vehicles – the hybrid car. A hybrid car is simply a vehicle which can draw from two or more sources of energy to provide propulsion. Hybrid vehicles are around us most of the time. In fact, many taxis are gasoline-NGV hybrids while many passenger trains are diesel-electric hybrids.

The most common type of hybrid car available today is the gasoline-electric hybrid. As the name suggests, it is a combination of both a gasoline powered car and a battery powered car. The primary goal of the hybrid vehicle is to reduce dependence on fossil fuel and a gasoline-electric hybrid accomplishes that by using an electric motor as a supplement. Having a gasoline engine eliminates the shortcomings of the electric powered car and the electric motor reduces the dependence on gasoline by supplementing the gasoline engine with additional horsepower. It is a compromise and an effective stop-gap measure until true alternative fuel technology vehicles have advanced enough for practical use.

Gasoline-electric hybrids still depend on gasoline fuel, but the electric motor greatly boosts fuel economy while maintaining their practicality. They have sufficient range, quick refuel times and comparable road performance. Some manufacturers such as Toyota claims that the Toyota Prius delivers an impressive 60 miles per gallon (26 km per liter). Actual consumer tests however rated this much lower at around 45 mpg (19 km/liter). Several models are available today, including the Honda Civic Hybrid, Toyota Prius, Ford Escape Hybrid, Mercedes Benz M Class and several others.

Another form of hybrid technology which sounds even more promising is the gasoline-water hybrid. This technology uses water as complementary fuel where water molecules are split into hydrogen and oxygen before being pumped into the fuel line. This Hydrogen Fuel Technology was perfected by a Malaysian scientist and is patented and better known as Hydroxene.

With a conventional gasoline engine, a mixture of gasoline and air is mixed and ignited in its combustion chamber. A Hydroxene vehicle uses the same conventional gasoline engine, but instead of a mixture of gasoline and air, it uses a mixture of gasoline, hydrogen and oxygen as its fuel. The inventor, Dr. Halim Mohammed Ali claims that this reduces gasoline consumption by up to 50 percent.

According to Malaysian sources, the technology has been tested on some 200 Proton cars (Malaysian national car) including the car used by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. As of writing time on November 2006, two vehicles have been adopted for mass production using Hydroxene technology. They are the LMG Tourer and LMG Trekker which are basically pickup trucks from Dadi Auto of China Both vehicles were showcased at the Oman International Motor Show between November 6 to 10 2006.