If you thought that hybrid vehicles were a great solution to some of the numerous environmental problems that the world is currently facing, you might be mistaken.
All hybrids run off a traditional internal combustion engine as well as an electric motor which gets great fuel economy of about 40 to 50 miles per gallon (mpg). But this fact doesn’t necessarily imply that hybrid cars will be the future of automobiles.
Hybrids do not protect the environment as much as one would believe. There is still a gasoline or diesel engine in the car, which means that fossil fuels still burn. The batteries used to power the electric motor are also harmful to dispose of and to create. Additionally, the rare metals needed to create the batteries are mined with environmentally harmful methods, and the manufacturing process of the batteries creates more pollution than the manufacturing of a traditional car, according to Stephen Williams in a New York Times article about the factory that produces the Prius in Toyota City, Japan.
Many people are drawn to hybrid vehicles because of the money they can save.
“If you compare [the calculated savings of buying a hybrid] to an SUV, you’ll be saving a lot of money,” physics teacher Mr. Vincent Guidi said about his Toyota Prius. “Compare it to a Honda Civic; you won’t be saving as much.”
He’s not wrong; there are temporary advantages in the purchase and use of hybrid cars. However, he’s talking about a small sized hybrid. Try using a hybrid system in an SUV, and the numbers aren’t nearly as appealing as the 50 combined mpg of the Prius. The Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Tahoe, and GMC Yukon all get around 15-17 mpg combined, while the hybrid versions of these vehicles get around 20-23 mpg, according to their respective companies. All of the hybrid versions also cost around 10,000 dollars more than their non-hybrid counterparts.
Don’t forget to add in the fact that the batteries in hybrid cars may need to be replaced during the lifespan of a car. Replacement batteries for the Prius cost over 3000 dollars, with the exact price depending on the model year of the car. The time of the battery’s replacement depends on how it was treated by the driver. Sometimes, battery replacement could be as much as half of the total value of the car.
Some believe that the future of automobiles is the use of fully electric cars. However, electric cars also suffer from similar issues as hybrids with high prices and the pollution produced during the making of the battery.
Because fully electric cars completely rely on the batteries for power, the lifespan of the battery is shortened tremendously. Estimated range on each charge of the battery varies per driver, but still doesn’t come close to the highest gasoline or diesel car ranges.
Electric cars produce no emissions, but what is being used to charge the batteries? If you plug the car into your house to charge it, you’re just using electricity made from the power plants that run off non-renewable resources.
The Honda FCX Clarity has been on the market for the past few years, running off of an electric motor that is powered solely by hydrogen fuel cells. The inner workings of the engine are complex, but the important points are that the hydrogen fuel cells are merged with oxygen to create electricity to form a sole byproduct of water. This model can only be leased and still uses a battery made from exotic metals. But, it still offers a promising start for an alternatively powered car.
Hybrid cars are a short-term solution to a long-term problem. Hopefully, these models can be used as stepping-stone on the path to an alternative fuel source for automobiles. The time is nigh for a change. Fossil fuel powered cars will soon be a thing of the past, and clean, powered and manufactured cars will be the norm.