New Kia Hybrid powered car

While it may be hard to believe today, it was only a few years ago that the hybrid powered car was seen as a very poor idea for new cars.  There were many engineers who said, “We’re doing what? We don’t see a business case,’ ” Toyota’s senior regulatory engineer recently stated.

It simply seemed like too large a risk for an automaker to consider.  The eco-friendly hybrids seemed to  violate the most basic rule of fuel economy - cut out excess weight. Instead of high tech plastics, these new vehicles had a huge, heavy battery pack that cost more than any fuel it could save.  Or so it seemed at the time.  Sure, it worked, the conventional thinking was, but it was like using a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.

Eight years and tens of thousands of hybrid powered car sales later, almost everyone believes in hybrids. With fuel bouncing between $3.00 and $4 per gallon, hybrid powered cars are nearly sold out nationwide, and Toyota is rushing to build a plant in Mississippi to get more Prius models on the road, and virtually every other automobile manufacturer is working overtime to do the same.

Today’s wisdom seems to be that just about every car on the road could become a hybrid within a few years as every major automaker pushes forward with the technology.

All that is needed is a way to get rid of those heavy and impractical batteries that are being used today.  If this can be done, car companies could be selling vehicles by 2010 that could conceivably never need gasoline. Why?  Well it’s because today’s hybrid car works on the basic principle that at low speeds, electric motors handle most of the driving, allowing the gasoline engine to shut down or run at very low levels.

The latest technology will even develope the electrical energy to charge these batteries without the use of gasoline.  One way is to use other forces that come into play with automobiles.  For example, when you hit the brakes, the hybrid generates electricity to recharge its batteries thru the transfer of the enertia that is created.  These additional advances in hybrid technology are the reason by everyone will be driving a hybrid within a few years  Additional basic features, such as cars that shut off their engines at red lights, will become standard. By 2020, new federal regulations will require companies to average 35 miles per gallon for all the vehicles they produce.