Hybrid Electric Cars: The Real and the Fake

When I hear "hybrid electric cars", all sorts of warm gooey associations come bubbling up. Turns out this happens to a lot of us.

So many of us, in fact, that if I were selling gas-gobblers, I might want to take advantage of all this warm gooeyness to sell more gas-gobblers.

Let's see, what could I do?

Drop in an extra battery to run the accessories, turn off the engine at stoplights (very virtuous! very green!) - oh yes, and stamp "hybrid" on the chassis. With that, I could call it a "hybrid" and get away with it, and all the warm gooeyness would be MINE. I'd make millions off the unsuspecting...

...and alas, someone already thought of it.

Let's talk about what makes a hybrid "real" (significantly increased gas mileage, lower emissions) and what makes a hybrid "fake" (a gas-guzzler draped in green).

Series hybrid drivetrain

These hybrid electric cars are good for in-town, stop-and-go driving, just like an (all) electric car. They're not so good for highway driving.

The automakers don't favor this type, for some reason. Oh, that's right - they're not in the electric car business, and these definitely resemble electric cars. There's no reason to use the gas generator at all when you can hook your batteries up to a charger!

Parallel hybrid drivetrain

These hybrid electric cars, according to this Wikipedia article on hybrid drivetrains, are the most common type of hybrid in production today. They're mostly the fake kind.

What characterizes the parallel hybrid system?

• Higher voltages than the usual 12-volt automotive electrical system;
• The electric motor/generator unit replaces the electric starter/alternator team found in the average ICE-mobile;
• The accessories (you know, the radio, the air conditioner, that sort of thing) are run off the electric motor. In some cases, as with the infamous 2005 Silverado hybrid, the electric drive was little more than a mobile plug-in for the power tools;
• The computer shuts off the ICE at stop-lights to save gas. (The problem here is that, because the oil takes a bit to get warmed up and flowing freely throughout, all this starting and stopping is not so good for gas engines. Good for the environment, though, in the form of reduced carbon emissions - and, um, also good for the carmakers, who'll be glad to sell you another car when the engine wears out; )

So where does the "faking" come in?

Power-assist hybrids are fake. Some of these - like the 2006 Mercury Mariner for one - only use the electric motor to provide extra torque in high-demand situations. They are still "hybrids", technically, but are not designed to ever move the wheels using electricity alone.

If both the electric motor and the gas engine are capable of moving the wheels...

...and either the electric motor OR the gas engine could be dominant (while still being called a "hybrid"), the automakers discovered that they could neatly disguise the same old gas-gulper as a hybrid electric car. The drive is controlled by computer, and just because the electric motor CAN move the wheels doesn't mean it HAS to! The manufacturer could deliver a hybrid that performs almost exactly like it's gas-gobbler brothers...

...and delivers about the same gas mileage, too; )

Combination series/parallel hybrid

Toyota figured out that if you've got to use a computer anyway, you might as well make things more efficient for running on the freeway AND running in town - so they came up with "hybrid synergy drive" that the Prius made famous.

The combination series/parallel hybrid uses a smaller gas engine than its gas-burning counterpart would typically use, because the gas-burner needs most of its muscle to get from 0-35mph...so if you don't want your ICE-mobile to be a SLUG (and who does?) then you've gotta have a fairly big engine.

Not the Prius, though...

It uses its electric car personality in town and on the low-gear acceleration, where electricity RULES - and then when you get up and going, a smaller gas-sipping engine kicks in to take you down the freeway. The computer control makes this switch flawless, as any happily addicted Prius driver will tell you.

Want more?

Hey, what a good idea! Come meet the plug-in hybrid on the next page.

Further reading: Wikipedia has a very good article on hybrid electric drivetrains, and special thanks to Sherry Boschert, author of Plug-in Hybrids, for the goods on "fake" hybrid electric cars.

I never said most of the things I said.
- Yogi Berra

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