In hybrid cars why are the choices gas+electric how about some different combo,s?
November 10, 2009 in Engineering
Did you know that you can save fuel and run your car on water
HEY boo boo asked:
How about a combo with steam the steam could be made from excess heat from the gas engine+heat from breaks or air pressure from a breaking pump
Did you know that you can save fuel and run your car on water
I would like to see diesel/electric. My diesel VW gets 43 mpg. If it was combined with a hybrid it might get 60!
Good question. I guess the technology just isn’t there yet.
There are alternate types such as solar energy cars to totally electric cars that run on alternating current, but these types are not made for mass production at the moment. Future cars that are currently in the works are Fuel Cell technology that will come out sometime in the future, other alternatives are currently being worked on.
Steam as an alternate option may not be the best technology to use, just like perpetual motion machines the problem arrises when you want to accelerate. In any case the technologies are not available yet but with some government incentives and more coming out I’m sure things will change in the next few years.
Didn’t Robert Fulton already invent the steam engine….hmmm…..maybe not.
steam is too inefficient.
The Japanese models of some hybrids have a plug for household current. For short trips, it acts like a traditional rechargeable electric car, and for longer trips, it acts like a hybrid. You can press a button to make it all electric for short trips.
To my knowledge, it is not sold in America.
Diesel-electric technology is used in locomotives.
What I want to see is solar-gasoline-electric. Slap some solar panels on the roof, trunk, and hood. That way, you charge your batteries while parked at work, at the store, etc. If your solar panels are powerful enough, you might even be able to run off them exclusively in bright sunlight.
In Brazil and other South American countries, car engines are designed to run on both gasoline and biofuel such as ethanol.
heat from the brakes is already converted into energy and stored in the battery in hybrid cars.
at the time being the best technology we have is to store the normally wasted energy as electricity.
someone’s looking into a hydraulic hybrid but the mpg gains aren’t that impressive if i remember.
diesel hybrids would be great in theory, but they require a lot of force to turn over. in current gas hybrids the electric motor is used as a starter, to spin the engine up to a couple hundred rpm’s before firing a spark.
plus… diesel is still a very dirty fuel. they’re improving on it but there’s still enough pollution to make them unavailable in california emissions states.