this episode of dnews is brought to you bythe toyota prius. let’s lead the way. are hybrid cars really such a new thing? nope.they've been around for over 100 years. in our fast-moving tech world, automobileshave come a long way, baby. but they've been working hard for more than 100 years to makethe things you see on the road today. in 1834, michael faraday came up with theidea that running electrical current through
history of 3d printing timeline, a coil could create a magnet -- and that sameyear thomas davenport, a blacksmith from vermont, used primitive batteries to create the firstelectric motor. by the 1850s, congress had attempted to build an all-electric train fromdc to baltimore, but the batteries sucked -- sound familiar? by the 1880s, electricmotors, power lines, and batteries allowed
for electric trams and trolleys in englandand in 1897 electric cars were first used for commercial taxis in new york city! thatbeing said, by 1900, only 38-percent of all us automobiles were electrical. steam andcombustion engines were very popular, but it wasn't because electrical engines weren'tgood, the baker motor company created a electric car that went 120 (miles per hour?), but thosebatteries doe. i assume you see where this is going. in 1900the first hybrid was created to get the best of battery and gas together! it was calledthe 'semper vivus' (always alive) and was invented by an austrian named ferdinand porsche;it could run using the gas, the batteries or both, was four wheel drive -- for the firsttime -- had four wheel brakes -- also, the
first time. but, thanks to low gasoline prices, stockcrashes, cheap gas, and two wars, the hybrid car fell by the wayside. that all changedin the 1970s when the gas crisis hit… people got wise. by the 90s, hybrids started appearingin dealerships. the first toyota prius, for instance, was introduced in japan in 1997. the benefit of the hybrid has to do with theproblems with inertia. as you might remember from bill nye, inertia is a property of matter,whereby an object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stayat rest. overcoming inertia is not awesome for gas engines. when a car begins moving,a gas engine has to work very hard to overcome
that inertia. gasoline motors being what theyare, this is super inefficient. but for highway driving, gas is great. a full gasoline enginecan create a max of about 100 kilowatts of power, but only needs around 7.5 during highwaydriving. this means the engine efficiency is low. hybrids usually have smaller engines,augmented by electricity. in a hybrid, the engine is one quarter the size (or less) butstill has a good amount of power overall. this is good because electric motors are crappyat sustained driving, but good at bursts of speed. during sustained driving an electricmotor is working hard all the time. thus, on a highway or country road, they would usemassive amounts of energy to keep the wheels moving, so instead a smaller gas engine takesover.
electric motors can handle the frequent stopsand starts with less energy. combined together, efficiency wins! even in the early 1900s porscheknew this, allowing drivers to choose to turn off the combustion motors in the semper vivusand use only the electrics, or could use both. today, we're seeing more and more efficientbatteries, smaller, more efficient engines and more hybrids and plug-in hybrids, whichuse even less gasoline. most modern hybrids also capture a lot of energy, taking the kineticenergy of braking, coasting or going downhill and converting that back into electrical energy. but the question remains, are they reallymore efficient? well, when you take into account all the carbon footprint of battery making,shipping, driving, burning fossil fuels and
so on -- yes. electrical cars pollute about1/10 as much as an all-gas car, hybrids about 1/8 as much. if i asked in 1998 if a regulardude would buy a hybrid car, i'd have been laughed out of the room. that's for hippies!but now? what do you think?
