Hybrid vs Electric Cars
The electric car, often called the Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV), is very inexpensive and very environmentally sound. How then do they compare with the Hybrid car?
Hybrid vs Electric Cars
Hybrid vs. Electric cars. This would seem to be a very lively debate, but the truth is that there is very little comparison between them at this current stage of development for both types. Neither the electric car nor the Hybrid are new ideas. They were first built right at the very beginning of the development of automobiles and designs have been improved over the years as both varieties took a far removed second place to internal combustion engine powered vehicles.
The electric vehicle concept took hold in several areas ranging from forklifts to golf carts. In recent years, the increasing cost of gasoline and concerns about the environment and the political stability of the World have awakened interest in electric cars as an alternative transportation mode. The electric car is capable of just about everything that a gasoline powered automobile is capable of except one major thing. This is cruising range. The jokes about electric cars have often referred to the length of the plug that is needed for them. This joke is not completely off base. Although the electric car runs on batteries and does not need to be plugged in to a wall socket to operate, the batteries drain fairly quickly and need to be recharged.
This need for frequent recharging is the major limiting factor of the electric car. It has reduced the electric car to what has been called a neighborhood car. This means that it is fine for short trips around town. It is ideal for short commutes to a nearby place of employment or for shopping. It can not handle long range trips down the Interstate highway system, however, and this is what keeps it restricted as an alternative. It is also what led to the development of the Hybrid car.
The Hybrid car works on a principle of sustaining the charge of the electric batteries. There are several ways this is done, but the most common is to have the gasoline engine running to power a generator that replaces the battery charge that powers the vehicle. Since the electric motors are carrying the main burden of power, the gasoline engine is not working as hard as in a conventional vehicle, nor is it using as much fuel.
At the present time, comparing Hybrid cars vs. Electric cars is not unlike compared peaches and apples. They may appear to serve a similar purpose and their uses do often overlap, but the cruising restrictions on the pure electric car keep it limited to the neighborhoods and cities while the Hybrid can take to the highways with its gasoline powered cousins. Many people see the Hybrid car as a stop gap measure until the Electric or the solar powered car technologies have overcome their limitations. This might be possible, but more likely the Hybrid concept of sharing the burden may be the best solution to transportation in the future decades.