By: Johan Young
Electric Hybrid Cars
The typical gasoline powered car containing combustion engine, fuel tanks, and transmission, while the gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle, the parts containing the following:
Gasoline Engine. Hybrid car engine that is relatively smaller than its gasoline-only counterpart. This is because of two reasons: (1) the car doesn’t require a big engine since there it uses another source of power, (2) a bigger engine means larger displacement, heavier weight, and poor fuel economy; since most electric hybrid cars are designed for maximum fuel efficiency, the engine has to be small. (Diesel engines for diesel-electric hybrid vehicles.)
Fuel Tank. The Fuel tank is the storage of energy from the gasoline engine. The size of fuel tanks on the electric hybrid car could be reduced because the car has to accommodate the size of the battery.
Transmission. Most hybrid cars use the same transmission as a conventional car.
Batteries. The batteries of a hybrid car are the energy storage device for the electric motor. The batteries perform 2 functions: they send energy to the electric motor and store energy that is being captured by the generator.
Electric motor. A hybrid electric motor is very sophisticated. It can perform as a motor as well as a generator. This means, the electric motor can draw the energy from the battery to accelerate the car or to assist the gasoline engine during acceleration. The electric motor can also act as a generator by slowing the car down and store the energy back to the battery.
Generator. The generator of a hybrid car is much the same as the electric motor but it only acts to produce electric power. Generators are mostly used on series hybrids.
Hybrid electric cars can parallel or series. Parallel hybrid cars can use the electric motor or gasoline engine to drive the transmission turns the wheels. Or, it can use both the electric motor and gasoline engine to the transmission and wheels rotate.
Series hybrids, as opposed to the parallel hybrids do not use gasoline engines to electric vehicles. However, the engine generator that powers the electric motor that drives the transmission or changes the battery.
Be it a parallel or series structure, the hybrid vehicle uses two sources of energy to provide the same performance we expect from a passenger car and increasing fuel economy at the same time.
