How Hybrids work

Despite popular notions, hybrid vehicles have a long and distinguished history. From the nuclear-diesel hybrids of nuclear submarines, through the electric-diesel hybrids of many trains to the electric-petrol hybrid of the fashionable moped, hybrid technologies have been with us many years.

But when we talk about hybrid technology, we generally refer to its applications in the automotive industry. There it is known as the Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV). There are many types of hybrid technology, from the almost purely electric car through to the lightly electrical assisted petrol powered cars.

But the main stay of the hybrid technology is the parallel hybrid, most used by Lexus and Toyota. Here there is a combination of the electric and petrol power. When reversing and navigating at low speeds the electric power is powering the car, allowing the combustion engine to sit idle, saving petrol usage and CO2 emissions. At higher speeds the engine will kick in giving the car the power of a combustion engine, allowing it to reach speeds and acceleration it would not get from an electric car.

Conversely, at top speeds both methods of driving the car forward are in use, the electrical and combustion motors combining together to give the car more power and a greater top speed than its engine would normally allow. Such power and speed is helping move hybrids away from the perceived 'lower end' of the automotive market and into the high performance arena.

The energy benefits from hybrid cars, both to the amount of petrol used and the environment, come in two forms.

1. When braking the energy acquired from stopping the car is absorbed back into the batteries, rather than dissipating as heat as per conventional cars, allowing a greater charge to the battery and less energy consumption topping it up.
2. With the electric motor working at low speeds and the combustion engine able to sit idle in that period much of the stop-start nature of city driving can be done entirely via electric use, dramatically cutting the CO2 emissions that cars give out, with a great benefit to the environment.