The hybrid car's time has come. The high (and obtaining higher) gas prices are forcing Americans to rethink their usage of their cars and trucks too as to begin seriously considering buying a hybrid.
A growing number of of us are opting for carpooling and using public transportation as opposed to driving our personal vehicles to and from our jobs. We're consolidating trips for our household errands. We're delaying or even canceling family vacations. We are making these changes because the price of gasoline is so high that we simply have no selection.
The problem is, we do not LIKE becoming forced to alter our driving habits. The majority of us recognize that our reliance on foreign oil just isn't a good factor and that America wants to locate a way to generate our own fuel. There are lots of of us which are seriously concerned about what burning all this fossil fuel is doing ecologically to the earth. We're worrying about cost AND pollution. Enter the hybrid car!
Hybrid cars, for example the Honda Insight, Toyota Prius, along with a number of others, rely on both a gasoline-powered engine and an electric motor (via potent batteries that recharge as you drive). The result has been a lot much better gas mileage (the Insight exceeds 60 miles per gallon within the city) and much fewer emissions. The difference is particularly evident although driving in the city -- the electric motor does most of the work during city driving, thus utilizing less gasoline, while the gasoline engine gives more power in the course of highway driving.
You will find some drawbacks to hybrid cars. They are generally smaller vehicles, created with lighter-weight parts, and you will likely have to sacrifice horsepower for fuel economy (forget about towing a trailer or boat having a hybrid vehicle, at the very least for now). In addition, the hybrid market has been small; it really is estimated to create up only 2% of the total automobile marketplace in 2008, and several automakers have been slow to enter that market.
And, some believe that hybrid cars are not as effective a technology remedy as alternative fuel technologies, like ethanol produced from corn, switch grass, or even hydrogen or saltwater.
I do not know what will power our vehicles within the future, but I know this: Steam power was replaced with electric power, and electric power was replaced by gasoline power, and eventually gasoline power will probably be replaced with some thing else. Regardless of whether hybrid cars represent the "replacement" or the means to locate the replacement, they do represent an achievable solution.
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