City living is for hybrid cars

When was the last time you pulled your car up to the gas pump?

If you're the regular American taxpayer, chances are you've been shocked many a times for the high price of gasoline. Once the pump reached past $20 dollars or $30 dollars, trading your gas hungry car becomes a sudden inspired idea. Or perhaps, you've been wondering, whether your car is one of the countless culprits, committing unspeakable crime against Mother Nature?

Still maybe, you just want to be the proud driver of a technologically advanced car in your place.

Luckily however, the automobile industry has had this technology, since the late 1990s. One of the first cars that used this technology was the Honda Insight. This hybrid car is sometimes called an electric-hybrid because it uses both an electric motor or generator, and a gas-burning engine. For hybrid cars, this is a development that it needed to prove its worth.

For hybrid cars, the issue of whether it is better than traditional vehicles has been lingering for quite some time now.

For hybrid cars, the work of flawlessly integrating a gas engine, a high-powered battery, and an electric motor, is nothing but ordinary. The high-powered battery provides power for the electric motor. This electric motor is continuously being recharged from recaptured energy that would normally be lost when the car is running.

This process, that is, recapturing of energy is what officially known as regenerative braking. Once needed, energy from the fuel engine is diverted to recharge the battery. In effect, a hybrid vehicle has no need for being plugged in. And this process seems to be fitted only for hybrid cars.

However, for hybrid cars to be fully appreciated, some basic understanding is in tall order. Basically, in order to understand the how the battery, the gas engine, and the electric motor work together, some sources of hybrid information divides the hybrid in two categories. One is considered as mild hybrids, and the other is a full hybrid. Each has its own way of incorporating the three components, to work wondrously.

Mild Hybrids

Mild hybrid vehicles work with their gas engine, by forcing to serve as the main propulsion, while the electric motor assist when there is need for extra kick or power. With this arrangement, the electric motor is dependent on the gas engine.

The electric motor will generate electricity that is absorbed by the battery, and it can also consume electricity from the battery. But this process is done one at a time. The Honda employed this technology for hybrid cars from 2003 to 2005 edition. Honda Insight is a good example for this one.

Full Hybrids

In full hybrid cars, the integration of the electric motor, gas engine, and the battery is complete. In this arrangement, the electric motor is able to operate on its own, provided that particular conditions while driving are met. Certain hybrids, for their electric motors to operate, need situations where low speed driving is possible.

For hybrid cars with this arrangement, gas engine starts to take over once the vehicle reaches higher speed level. During acceleration, the gas engine and the electric motor can work simultaneously to produce the needed power.

Needless to say, full hybrids, unlike their mild cousins, are able to produce and consume electricity simultaneously. Examples of hybrid cars using this technology are the Ford Escape Hybrid, Mercury Mariner Hybrid, Lexus RX 400h, Toyota Highlander, and the Toyota Prius,

Currently, there are lots of hybrid car models available in the market. These hybrid cars differs in engine specifications, designs, colors, and other general features. Detailed specifications are available in many websites. From these websites, the stiff competition among the hybrid manufacturers is forcing these companies to elevate their products in higher grounds regularly, in terms of quality.

But with all the information available regarding hybrid cars, it is important to do our own research, which one among the many is specifically tailored to our need. And this need is particularly fitted with people living in cities, or urban areas. And since urbanization is unlikely to see its decline in the near future, it is assured that our need for hybrid cars will continue. We do want our cities to be more livable, don't we?