Hybrid Cars

by: Yousef Alahmadi

With the continuous increase of gas prices, the use of alternative more efficient transportation method is very essentially. A very popular method, nowadays, is the new hybrid cars, such as Toyota Prius. Comparing to the normal cars, the hybrid cars can provide a very similar efficacy while burning less then half the gas a normal gas burns.  

Usually the designer of hybrid cars tries to utilize a different source of energy, such as solar energy or fule-cell energy, to reduce the consumption of fule, which causes the a noticeable increase of the car manufacturing cost. However, the newly introduced hybrid cars reuses the energy of the car, causing a huge reduction of the fule consumption while having, relatively, the same initial cost as regular car. 

One of the main differences between the hybrid and regular car is the breaking system. In a normal car, the car slows down using the regular breaks, which converts the moving energy of the car to heat energy (as shown below). Therefore, each time the driver of the regular car pushes the breaks he is losing energy, which means he is losing gas.

   

However, the hybrid car utilizes this lost energy by having a different braking system, batteries, and a motor. The braking system uses the slow-down energy to charge the batteries of the car. Then, the motor reuses this energy to speed up the car. By doing so, the loss energy in a hybrid car has been reduced to minimum; thus, the fule efficiency has been increased to the maximum.