Hybrid Car

The Hybrid Cars: Technology and performance

By Ankur Chokshi

Prof. Harry Fox

MET 351

04/26/2010

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This paper contains the components of the hybrid engine and how it works. It also focuses on the types of hybrid engines with its performance and benefits. The paper also describes how the current environmental issues can be solved by the use of hybrid cars. The history of the hybrid engine is as under.

The works and development of many people created a first car more than a century ago. The first steam-powered car could attain a speed of 6 Kilometer per hour was designed by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot and constructed by M. Brezin in 1769. Just a few years later, same team had designed and constructed the much faster car which was so fast that it crashed to the wall, recording world’s first car accident (Bellis). The development of internal combustion engine was the next step towards the development of car and the automobile industry. The lack of known fuel which could be safely and internally combusted had stopped the development in early 18th century. A Frenchman, Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir, built the first successful two stroke gas driven engine in 1860. In 1899, Ford formed the Detroit Automobile company which has made some prototypes of hybrid engine but no production took place until 1903 (Bellis). The first prototype hybrid engine was made by Ferdinand Porsche also in 1899 (Billman). Hybrid cars combined the benefits of gasoline engine with the use of electric motor to obtain different objectives such as improved fuel economy, increased power, or additional auxiliary power for electronic devices and power tools. There are number of different examples of hybrid engines around the world. A Moped is the example of a two wheeled hybrid vehicle. The electric motor is coupled with one of the wheel in combination of human effort to push pedals. The train is also an example of industrial hybrid vehicle (Linsley).

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- 1899, Ferdinand...