Hybrid cars?
By Cars & Motorcycles on Feb 09, 2009 with Comments 6
pinktarantulas_x asked: How are hybrid cars different from standard petrol cars in terms of carbon dioxide emissions and other green house gas emission outputs?
Filed Under: Hybrid Cars
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Generally the same except when stuck in a traffic jam. During this time the engine shuts off and the car runs on battery.
There are many different and complex designs of vehicle powerplants that classify as ‘hybrid’, each with different specs and advantage/disadvantages.
The most effective (and fodder for conspiracy types- least used) is where the wheels are turned entirely with electric motors run off batteries supplemented with electricity generated by a fueled motor. The batteries are recharged both by the turning of the axles, as well as the motor’s output.
Emissions issues come from fuel use. An internal combustion engine that actualy provides the wheel turning power needs to burn alot of fuel. An electricity generator needs much less. Also, regular cars rarely convert to cleaner fuels due to practical issue of quantity and availability. An electric generator can easily be run on cleaner fuels (LPG,CNG, etc) because a small amount will go a long way.
Standard fossil fuel (infernal combustion or ice) engines are very inefficient, they rarely run at optimum load, speed or temperature.
Hybrids work by using a much more efficent electric motor to help optimise the ice, there are many ways of doing this. the most common, the Prius, runs the ice at set number of optimised speeds matched to the load. any spare energy is stored in the batteries, or the electric motor assists the ice when required, eg accelerating.
or consider a high torque low maintenance, quiet smooth electric motor, but only have a beattery big enough for 1-2 miles (because of licensing restrictions imposed by Chevron/Texaco patent owners), then a clunky smelly engine has to be added that can only be refulled at a petrol station rather than conveniently plugged in at home.
in general, alot less. a hybrid car has smaller engines. so u get less emissions from that. and when you are running off of battery power and engine is not running there is nothing. obviously.
A Prius has 104 g/km of CO2 emissions, which is about 55% less than other cars of the same class equipped with emissions control devices.
For example, a Toyota Corolla has about 167 g/km CO2 emissions
A Honda Accord has 229 g/km
A Range Rover has 389 g/km
Hummer H3 (the smallest Hummer) has 346 g/km
Cadillac Escalade has 383 g/km
So a Prius is quite good in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. A Swiss study also found it to be the greenest car on the planet.
hybrid cars are diffrent from standard petrol cars because petrol cars put more pollution than hybrid cars