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Facts on Hybrid Cars
Much has been stated about the environmental effect of the hybrid cars. Much of the discussion is factual in terms of the cars mostly getting better Miles Per Gallon (MPG) than traditional gasoline using cars. For the car model year 2009, Environmental Protection Agency had this to say about the hybrid cars:
This also leads to the fact that as the hybrids use less gasoline, they also pollute the air less, and also contribute less to the global warming problem by releasing less CO2. One of the lesser known facts about hybrid cars is that they reduce the noise levels in city driving conditions, where the traditional combustion engine noise can contribute a lot to the overall noise levels. This is because in the city driving speeds the hybrids often use all-electric mode, where the car runs on the electric batteries, and the electric engine has a silent operational noise level. The flip side of that silent operation is that some have been fearing that the pedestrian accidents are going to go up as people don't hear the silent hybrids approaching in all-electric mode. Some have been speculating that hybrid cars are a fad that is likely to go away. However, the facts of the hybrid car market speak against that notion. There are already over 1 million Toyota Prius hybrid cars on the world roads, for example, and all the major car manufacturers are making moves towards increasing their future output of either hybrid cars, or very fuel efficient combustion engine cars. Of course, fact is that the fate of the hybrids is very much tied to the price of oil and price of electricity from the grid. As oil prices go up, one of the facts on hybrid cars is that it makes sense for the consumers to purchase vehicles that use as little as possible that commodity, and hybrids are a significant step towards that goal, and as EPA has stated, often the performance is as good with hybrids as it is with gasoline cars. Some see the end of that development being plug in all-electric cars, which do not use gasoline at all. Whether that happens is tied to what is going to happen to electricity prices from the grid when its demand goes up drastically. Even in that scenario, many see much of the future car fleet being hybrids, where the hybrid engine uses fuel cell technology and electricity from the grid.
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