Gadgetory

I'm going to simplify here and put hybrids in four categories mild full or strong plug-in and performance first what's a hybrid it's a car with two power plants that could be any two kinds of power plants but in modern parlance it means a combustion engine and an electric motor these two power plants can either work in parallel both helping move the car at the same time or in series handing off back and forth to each other another key trait is regeneration not growing a new leg but charging the battery when you brake or coast the electric motor then flips modes and turns into a generator as the cars momentum turns it and of course hybrids have a large motive battery separate from the auxilary battery that you see in your current car or toss on the side of the road let's look at the parts that make up a hybrid powertrain now you start with a combustion engine and a fuel supply just like any other car and by the way it's almost always a gas engine there are diesel hybrids out there they're exceedingly rare there's a motor generator that's that motor that sometimes works as a generator typically wedged in between the gas engine and the transmission working one way it's a motor being worked by the car it becomes a generator to put juice back in the battery a motive battery usually nickel metal hydride but increasingly lithium-ion and these are big batteries much bigger than the one you get jump-started not unlike a very large version what's in your laptop or your smart phone an extra cooling system that battery has got to be maintained at a critical temperature and it can't share the cooling system for the engine because this runs way hotter than the battery would be happy at a battery wants things substantially cooler then you get to the inverter and the converter the inverter changes DC to AC battery store DC the motor wants AC the converter changes voltage stepping up or down depending who is asking for what within the hybrid system you've got an ECU that's an electronic control unit that makes all this stuff work together and finally if you've got a plug-in hybrid there's an onboard charger which is not just the cable that goes to the wall but it's circuitry inside the car that pulses that juice to the battery the way it wants it now I think you can see why they charge a few grand more for a hybrid now the four ways all this tech hits the road mild hybrids a mild hybrid basically uses an electric motor to help the combustion engine but never take over moving the car by itself it may be mild but it's a useful architecture because combustion engines are really lousy at generating a lot more power when you need it right now quite from a stop or when you're passing electric motors are really good at giving an instantaneous push at exactly those times so they jump in to help the combustion engine mild hybrids usually have more modest electric motors and motive batteries so they tend to have less of a hybrid premium cost examples of mild hybrids include the GM assist system which you'll find on the Chevy Cruze eco for example so simple it works basically like an alternator helping the engine through a flexible belt and the Honda Insight also made headlines as being one of the first really affordable dedicated hybrid models after the Prius which brings us to full or strong hybrids strong hybrids have the option to run on electric only for meaningful distances and speeds let's say up to a handful of miles at city speeds these kinds of hybrids have larger batteries and motors and typically more sophisticated power blending system where the engine and the electric motor power meet and when you talk about full hybrids you're talking about the sweet spot of the market that of course brings you to the Prius now available in three variants it's a family unto itself and it pretty much out sells all other hybrids combined but also cars like the Ford Fusion and other Stream models that now offer highly efficient hybrid variants that are getting some market traction so what's a plug-in hybrid a plug-in as the name suggests can be plugged in that allows it to use a larger battery pack than even a strong hybrid larger than regeneration alone could ever sustain so plugins are sort of stronger hybrids offering up to tens of miles of electric range and up to highway speeds you may not use gas at all for your commute if you just plug in daily now when it comes to plug-in hybrids the best known and the best-selling is the Chevy Volt which by the way is also a range extender kind of a corollary or an adjunct to hybrids you want to learn about that go see all about it in episode 4 seen on cars another well-known but very new plug-in hybrid is the Ford c-max Energi that is the plug-in version of a car that's also available as a non plug-in hybrid now what about performance hybrids hybrids aren't all for tree-hugging some are for curve hugging unlike gas engines electric motors deliver all of their torque from one rpm instead of having to rev up to peak power and torque is what makes accelerating fun so by biasing a hybrid power system toward that aim you can get tremendous acceleration as well as decent mpg for example when the Lexus GS Hybrid came out it actually had worse Highway mpg than the conventional v6 yet it was as fast as the v8 and when it comes to performance hybrids this gets into a matter of some interpretation but I definitely think of the Lexus GS Hybrid as one that was among the first to say electric is fast not just efficient and also Porsches 918 this car is going to have nearly 900 horsepower but they won't all come from its v8 almost 300 will come from its electric motors now as you know almost every hybrid model has its own MSRP typically a few grand or more than a comparable combustion model if you want to run your own calculation on how long it'll take to earn back the so called hybrid penalty we've got some calculator links at CNET on cars calm