Hybrid Cars

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the type of car or truck we drive has a larger impact on the environment than any other consumer choice we make. Big, gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing SUVs seem to have taken over the roads, unfortunately, but other options are beginning to make their way to automaker’s showrooms.

The most promising are the new hybrid cars: Toyota’s Prius and Honda’s Insight, which use a conventional gas-powered internal combustion engine coupled with a technologically impressive electric motor. When the car is idling, coasting or accelerating slowly, the gas engine shuts off and the electric motor takes over, reducing emissions to zero and greatly extending fuel range, which puts both cars at the top of the greenest cars for 2001. At higher speeds or rapid acceleration, the gas engine kicks in, not only powering the car but charging the electric batteries.

The major misconception about these cars is that they need to be plugged in for recharging. The truth is the gas engine powers a large generator that charges the batteries, and in a true display of innovative thinking, both cars use a regenerative braking system that captures energy typically lost while coasting, slowing or stopping and converts that energy to electricity to be stored in the batteries.

These cars use a number of other engineering solutions to achieve high fuel efficiencies, such as aluminum body components, aerodynamic styling, a low-load air conditioning system (in the Prius) and new Electronically Controlled Variable Transmissions (the Insight has only been available in a manual transmission version, but an automatic version is due in showrooms in May).

The Insight is a two-seater and has no cut-off switch for the passenger airbag, so it can’t carry children. But for commuters, it boasts an impressive 61 mpg city and 68 mpg highway. The 4-door, five-person Prius is more functional and gets 52 mpg city and 45 mpg highway (that’s not a misprint -- the electric engine gives the Prius better city mileage than highway). Consumer Reports estimates that driving 15,000 miles per year and spending $1.50 per gallon, fuel costs for the Prius would be only $555, compared with $910 for a Ford Focus or $1,515 for a Jeep Grand Cherokee V8.

Neither car is being produced in large numbers yet; the Insight only sold 4,000 units in the U.S. in its first 14 months in the U.S., and the Prius 8,058 units in its first eight months. But there are waiting lists for both vehicles as the popularity of these revolutionary cars continues to grow. See http://www.InsightCentral.net/, http://www.insightowner.com/links.html and http://www.priusenvy.com to see how owners feel about their cars.

The technology and the interest in green cars have proven themselves, which means that more hybrid cars are on the way. Toyota has already introduced a hybrid minivan in Japan. Honda plans to unveil a hybrid Civic in early 2002 in the U.S. The big three automakers are also getting into the hybrid act and are thinking big, as in big trucks instead of compact cars. Ford appears to be the most environmentally conscious, putting out a hybrid version of its Escape SUV in 2003 that it claims it will get 40 mpg in the city (almost double what it now gets) and meet California's stringent emission standards. Dodge is planning a hybrid version of its Durango SUV and GM is planning hybrid versions of some pickups, all with efficiency increases in the 20 percent range.