Have you pulled your car up to the gas pump lately and been shocked by the high price of gasoline? As the pump clicked past $20 or $30, maybe you thought about trading in that SUV for something that gets better mileage. Or maybe you are worried that your car is contributing to the greenhouse effect. Or maybe you just want to have the coolest car on the block.

Currently, there is a solution for all this problems; it's the hybrid electric vehicle. The vehicle is lighter and roomier than a purely electric vehicle, because there is less need to carry as many heavy batteries.

The internal combustion engine in hybrid-electric is much smaller and lighter and more efficient than the engine in a conventional vehicle. In fact, most automobile manufacturers have announced plans to manufacture their own hybrid versions.

How does a hybrid car work? What goes on under the hood to give you 20 or 30 more miles per gallon than the standard automobile? And does it pollute less just because it gets better gas mileage. In this seminar we will study how this amazing technology works and also discuss about TOYOTA & HONDA hybrid cars.

Any vehicle is hybrid when it combines two or more sources of power. In fact, many people have probably owned a hybrid vehicle at some point. For example, a mo-ped (a motorized pedal bike) is a type of hybrid because it combines the power of a gasoline engine with the pedal power of its rider.

Hybrid electric vehicles are all around us. Most of the locomotives we see pulling trains are diesel-electric hybrids. Cities like Seattle have diesel-electric buses -- these can draw electric power from overhead wires or run on diesel when they are away from the wires. Giant mining trucks are often diesel-electric hybrids. Submarines are also hybrid vehicles -- some are nuclear-electric and some are diesel-electric. Any vehicle that combines two or more sources of power that can directly or indirectly provide propulsion power is a hybrid.

The most commonly used hybrid is gasoline-electric hybrid car which is just a cross between a gasoline-powered car and an electric car. A 'gasoline-electric hybrid car' or 'hybrid electric vehicle' is a vehicle which relies not only on batteries but also on an internal combustion engine which drives a generator to provide the electricity and may also drive a wheel. In hybrid electric vehicle the engine is the final source of the energy used to power the car. All electric cars use batteries charged by an external source, leading to the problem of range which is being solved in hybrid electric vehicle.

HYBRID STRUCTURE

You can combine the two power sources found in a hybrid car in different ways. One way, known as a parallel hybrid, has a fuel tank, which supplies gasoline to the engine. But it also has a set of batteries that supplies power to an electric motor. Both the engine and the electric motor can turn the transmission at the same time, and the transmission then turns the wheels.

An electric motor is all about magnets and magnetism: A motor uses magnets to create motion. We know the fundamental law of all magnets: Opposites attract and likes repel. So if you have two bar magnets with their ends marked "north" and "south," then the north end of one magnet will attract the south end of the other. On the other hand, the north end of one magnet will repel the north end of the other (and similarly, south will repel south). Inside an electric motor, these attracting and repelling forces create rotational motion .

DC series motor used in hybrid electric vehicle is a versatile and flexible machine. It can satisfy the demands of load recurring high starting, accelerating and retarding torques. A DC machine is also easily adaptable for drives with a wide range of speed control and fast reversals. In the diagram shown below we can see two magnets in the motor: The armature (or rotor) is an electromagnet, while the field magnet is a permanent magnet

Using the concept of Hybridization of cars results in better efficiency and also saves a lot of fuel in today's fuel deficit world. Though at present the concept has been put in to maximum utilization by Honda & Toyota, it is indeed an important research avenue for other car manufacturing units as well. A hybrid gives a solution to all the problems to some extent. If proper research and development is done in this field, hybrid vehicle promises a practical, efficient, low pollution vehicle for the coming era. One can surely conclude that this concept and the similar ones to follow with even better efficiency & conservation rate are very much on the anvil in today's energy deficit world.