Description
The thing that makes a car a
hybrid car is its use of dual technology. At the moment almost all
hybrid cars use a combination of a gas or diesel engine and an electric
motor. The energy for most of these motors is generated from the hybrid
cars engine and stored in the batteries. There is however a slight
difficulty with this system: the battery. The batteries that are
commonly used in hybrid cars are still very similar to the standard car
batteries that have been in use for great many years.
While these batteries were adequate to power the normal requirements of
your average car, such as starter motor, lights, air conditioning, etc.
They are not powerful enough to drive the electric motor of the new
hybrid cars. The new hybrid cars that are actually driven in part by
their electric motors need a far greater source of energy. Traditional
batteries are simply not powerful enough.
This shortfall has, in the past, been made up by simply using larger
amounts of batteries to increase the power available in hybrid cars.
However this solution has, although practical in the short term,
provided its own set of problems. The power needed to drive the hybrid
cars electric motor meant that a large number of batteries were needed
and this meant increased weight and cost.
The extra weight of these meant more load had to be pulled by the cars
motor (whether gas or electric) and this led to increased fuel
consumption, either to drive the engine or to provide electricity for
the motor. This of course, in part at least, defeated the object of
using the electric motor, which was to cut fuel costs. Also large
amounts of batteries are expensive to buy and, given the limited
longevity of most batteries, to replace, which all adds to both the
initial cost and the maintenance of the vehicle.
The main hope for improving this situation for hybrid cars lies with
lithium batteries. These are the same batteries that are currently used
to power laptops and cameras. They provide a much more concentrated and
therefore smaller way of storing energy as electricity. If developed to
their full potential they could provide a long term solution to the
problem of providing sufficient electric power to make hybrid cars a
more practical solution to low cost, low emission motoring.
The problem with lithium batteries is making them big enough so that
they can store enough energy to power hybrid cars without having to
revert to the gas engine when driving in town. Lithium batteries are
very efficient when manufactured to a certain capacity but if this is
increased they are subject to a condition called thermal run off. This
can cause larger batteries to overheat and in some instances they can
actually catch fire.
The main problem is the cobalt, a metal used in the manufacture of
lithium batteries. Many manufactures have been working on a solution to
this problem. Subaru, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Toyota, probably the
leading manufactured of hybrid cars, are all working on solutions to
this. The most promising solution seems to be replacing the cobalt with
phosphate this produces a much safer and more reliable battery. There
is some power loss as opposed to the cobalt but the batteries should
still be a long way ahead of conventional batteries used in hybrid cars.
With these advances in battery technology the hybrid cars of the future
seem set to be even more efficient with greater power storage available
at a lower cost. And with more reliable and smaller batteries being
used, costs both in the way of retail prices and running costs look set
to decrease, the saving in both fuel and emissions that have always
been the goal of hybrid cars manufacturers, appear to be improving.
By: lar west
Sustainable Living Articles @ http://www.articlegarden.com
Larry Westfall is the owner of
www.Asian-Daily.com
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