How Do Hybrid Cars Work?

How do Hybrid Cars Work? This page provides video reviews of various technologies to explain how are hybrid cars made.

Hybrids today fall into one of two categories: full and mild. The main difference is whether or not the car can propel itself solely on electric power.


Full hybrids like the Chevrolet Tahoe, Ford Escape, Nissan Altima, and the Toyota Prius and Camry can start off silently, creep in stop-and-go traffic and putt around town at low speeds on just electricity. The gasoline engine kicks in as soon as the driver demands quicker acceleration to supplement the electric power. The engine can also turn off when the car is slowing down or coasting. Full hybrids are more expensive to produce, but they typically save more fuel and run cleaner, especially in city driving.

Mild hybrids like the Chevrolet Malibu and the Saturn Vue Green Line can shut the engine off when the car is stopped and restart it as soon as you take your foot off the brake pedal. They use electric power only to assist the gas engine on hills and when accelerating. Mild hybrids produce only a modest gain in fuel economy yet command a purchase-price premium.

Both types save gas by shutting down the gas engine at stops. The Prius uses a smaller gas engine than the similar-sized Toyota Corolla. Other vehicles typically use the smaller of the available gas engines in the equivalent nonhybrid models. All of them also use the electric motor to recoup some of the energy it takes to stop and use it to charge the batteries.

Driving these hybrids is really no different than driving other cars, except that the engine sometimes stops and starts by itself. At first it might seem a little strange but it's easy to get used to, especially if the transition to gasoline-engine operation is smooth. In fact, some hybrids feel smoother than comparable four-cylinder economy models because the electric motor is quiet and the gas engine is less strained under low-speed acceleration.

How do Hybrid Cars Work? - Video Player

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Toyota Prius Hybrid Technology

Flywheel Hybrid Technology

Interview with a UK-based company that’s developing a technology called a flywheel hybrid. Instead of using a big, heavy battery to store energy, the Torotrak system uses a spinning flywheel. It’s simple and lightweight compared to traditional electric hybrids.

The flywheel hybrid system will be based on technology recently developed in Formula One race cars. The entirely mechanical system recovers the kinetic energy of a vehicle during braking in a high speed rotating flywheel, rather than using an electric motor to store it in batteries, as in current electric hybrids.

Such kinetic energy hybrid systems have several potential advantages over full electric hybrids, depending on the application. They are more efficient in recovering energy during braking and should be substantially cheaper to produce than electric hybrid systems. The flywheel is also better at 'deep cycle' charge and recharge, whereby all the energy is either released or recovered from the unit, with no loss in performance over the life of the vehicle, as can be the case with electric-based systems where batteries can lose their ability to fully charge and discharge.

Jaguar and Ford are major sponsors of the project.

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