Hybrid cars the solution for Air pollution, global warming and fuel crisis problems

        Hybridization and hybrid cars

Hybridization is the process of combining two or more different technologies, materials or plants to get a new one with required properties.

When a car runs on conventional ic(internal combustion) engines as well as on electric motor then that car is called a hybrid car. Basically cars having two power sources is called a hybrid car.

Hybrid Car

          Need of hybrid cars

Today one of the biggest problem in the world is global warming and depliting fossil fuels.This has obliged companies, researchers and engineers around the world to come up with some alternate solutions for automobiles.

Recently Delhi have witnessed the thick and dense smog being spread over a vast geographical region. The consequences of it are very large that ranges from heath problems specially for asthama patients, lots of cases of vehicle accidents due to very less visibility, etc . All these consequences can proove to be dangerous and fatal to the people.

    Among many alternatives possible like (solar car, hydrogen fueled car, etc) in place of conventional fueled vehicles, hybrid cars technology is distinctly ahead of other options due to following things

1.)   When compared with solar cars, hybrid cars looks more feasible option because

  Storage :- solar cars have very less energy density so to get required amount of power large sized storage (batteries) are required which increases weight of vehicle and size of vehicle also increases which again increases vehicle weight decreasing the performance of the car. Whereas in hybrid cars components like electric motor, batteries, alternator, etc have to be installed in addition to ic engine which means slight modifications to the conventional cars can serve the purpose.

   Design :-  Also some creative modifications has to be done in the design of car body to accommodate maximum number of solar panels over the roof. In hybrid cars no such modifications is needed in car body.

Solar Car

   Efficiency :-  Efficiency of conversion of solar energy into electric energy should be high enough as energy density of sunlight is very less compared to fossil fuels.In other words the sunlight falling on the surface of solar panel is to be converted into electric energy which is only a fraction of total sunlight falling on earth.

   Weather conditions :- Solar cars are not much useful in cloudy weather, at night and places where sunshine is not much bright. Hybrid cars are useful in all weather as well as in different load and speed conditions.

      Due to following drawbacks of solar car, hybrid cars technology is a better option for now.

2.)  Now comparing hybrid cars with hydrogen fuelled cars.

    Storage :- The main problem with the hydrogen car is the storage of liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen has very low boiling point so it is available only in gaseous form at room temperature. To store hydrogen in liquid form in a tank, the temperature inside the tank should be below 100's of degree Celsius which is a difficult as well as expensive task.

Hydrogen car

    Storage tank size :- Another problem with hydrogen is it's low molecular weight which means to store same amount of hydrogen, almost three times bigger tank is required compared to same amount of petrol.

    Apart from all these challenges, hydrogen cars can provide great benefits from the fact that hydrogen is available in large quantity Hyrogen is not available in pure form in nature but it can be extracted from water through electrolysis process. In other words we can say that this car runs using water as a fuel.

       Due to such big problems, hydrogen car is not much feasible for now.