What is a Hybrid Vehicle??
Hybrid automobiles:
Two questions are addressed in this article First is
what is a hybrid vehicle??? and secondly how it works??Addressing the first question, Any vehicle that combines two or more power sources and can directly or indirectly provide propulsion power is a hybrid automobile.A simple example is the mo-ped which combines the pedaling power of the rider and the fuel ignition power.Submarines are another example of hybrid vehicles, which runs on nuclear as well as electric power.Most hybrid cars in market are either petrol-electric or diesel-electric hybrids.Hybrids are combination of both technology.Before going on to this let’s understand how each of this is working on its own.A petrol or gasoline powered vehicle has a fuel tank which on ignition powers the engine and turns the transmission(gears), which rotates the wheels.An electric vehicle, on the other hand, has a set of batteries that provides electricity to the electric motor. The motor turns a transmission, and the transmission in turn rotates the wheels. Now what a hybrid vehicle does is, increases the fuel efficiency and trying to avoid the bad effects of the electric vehicle, like keeping up with traffic, travelling a certain distance without re-fueling.A bio-fuel powered vehicle meets all these requirements but at the cost of pollution and wastage of non-renewable resource.When an electric car rectifies the ill-effects of the other, it falls short of the basic requirements of speed, large re-fueling times etc
Petrol-Electric Hybrid:
Petrol-electric hybrid automobile contain the following parts:
A Petrol engine – The hybrid car has a petrol engine like the one we find on most vehicles. However, the engine on a hybrid will be smaller and uses advanced technologies to reduce emissions and will provide us with a better efficiency.
An Electric motor – Its advanced electronics allow it to act as a motor and as a generator. That is when it needs to, it can draw power from the batteries to accelerate the car and in the role of a generator, it can slow the car down and return energy to the batteries or charge the batteries.
A Fuel tank – The fuel tank in a hybrid is the storage for the petrol engine. Petrol has a much higher energy density than batteries do.
A Generator – is similar to an electric motor, but it acts only to produce electrical power.
Batteries - The batteries in a hybrid are the energy storage device for the electric motor. Unlike the petrol engine the electric motor on a hybrid vehicle can put energy into the batteries as well as draw energy from them.
The two power sources explained above are combined in the hybrid in different ways, parellel and series hybrid. In the parallel hybrid both the engine and the electric motor can turn the transmission at the same time, and the transmission then turns the wheels.That is both the mechanisms can give the propulsion.In a series hybrid the fuel engine turns a generator, and the generator can either charge the batteries or power an electric motor that drives the transmission. Thus in a series hybrid the fuel engine never directly powers the vehicle.The direct benefits that emerged due to this complex engineering are less emissions and great mileage.Which in turn has many benefits like less production of green house gases, more impact on customers due to less spending on fuel etc.The key to a hybrid vehicle is that the fuel engine is much smaller than the one in a conventional vehicle and therefore more efficient. In a small engine, the efficiency can be improved by using small and light parts, by reducing the number of cylinders and thus the aim of fuel efficiency is achieved.
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