As for battery recycling, technically all toxic materials need to be recycled. Conventional lead/acid batteries, and similarly more advanced material batteries, are 95+% recyclable, meaning the materials are not wasted. Ultimately the batteries have a reclamation value and the market has a continuous demand for that material, so there won’t be a recycling charge, and in fact you’ll get (certainly not much) some money back.

My 2005 Acura TL boasts 228 hp out of its six cylinder engine. It gets about 17 mile per gallon around town and up to 30 on the road.

In terms of performance, most electric cars (except for the hyper expensive exotic electric cars) seem to be built around high “mileage” vs. rubber burning performance.

The article says electrics are more efficient and thus need less power in the “tank” to move you along, but many gasoline engined cars could be downsized to four, three or even two-cylinder engines capable of “moving” the vehicle.

Question: if the gasoline and electric powered cars have equal performance (acceleration, top speed, etc), does one consume less power than the other?

The electric motor on a hybrid is relativly low powered compared to the gasoline engine. On the Honda Insight for example the electric motor generates only about 15 hp equivalent while the gas generates about 75. How could 1/5 the power double the effeciency?

The answer lies in one of a gasoline engine’s inherent limitations. The physical cylinder/cam shaft can only be one size. While valve sizes and rates of air/fuel can be varied during driving, the engine is cast only one time, in the factory.

An accelerating engine would like one size cylinder so it can deliver energy very fast, but at crusiing speed a different size is better. The compromise wastes energy at both speeds.

With a second, electric motor which can instantly provide torque handeling the power phase, the physical cylinder size can be optomized for lower power crusing speed. Effeciency is the secret not batteries.

Considering the law of conservation of mass and energy, how does the hybrid that does not plug in and is recharged by burning fuel, get higher gas mileage than does the same vehicle with the same engine running only on engine power. Notably the Ford Escape Hybrid vs. the Escape with both using the 4-cylinder engine.

I understand that the electric motors are much more efficient at moving the vehicle than is the engine but, if it is more efficient to have the engine turn a generator that charges the batteries than turn a drive shaft that moves the vehicle, why not run on batteries alone and have the engine set up in your garage at night to charge the batteries.

With the Ford Escape Hybrid both the motor and the engine are connected to running gear. It appears that Volvo has followed the idea of the engine powering the batteries only and we will have to wait to see how that works out.

OK now to the hard part it that convoluted question was not confusing enough.

My Physics friends tell me that the hybrid breaks at least to laws of physics. One is the law on entropy. By that I am referring to Lord Kelvin’s comment that it is impossible to convert heat completely to work. If the power goes directly to push of the vehicle then there is one loss of conversion. If the power goes to charge the battery there is still a loss but there is a second loss when the battery power is used to turn the wheels. In the hybrid either of the losses may be less than the loss from direct drive but the total of both losses must be more than the single loss or we are looking at a prepetual motion problem.
The second problem is outlined by the First Law of Thermodynamics — really need the math here. So lets try again,
dU= theataQ – theataW
or in English any net increase in the internal energy U of a thermodynamic system must be fully accounted for in terms of heat (theataQ) entering the system minus work (theataW) done by the system.

So heat must go somewhere, if it is not used to create motion then it is wasted somewhere and MPG must suffer. . If electricity were a waste product of the fossil fuel engine and it were being salvaged, then the hybrid would be an obvious fix and would cause the mileage to soar.

Because hybrids do work and produce better MPG or higher efficiency than do non-hybrids my physics powered friends are running on the wrong fuel.

I realize that this question is poorly stated and may be somewhat difficult to follow but I believe that it its at the core of the move from fossil fuel to plugging into the grid.

Thanks for a great page on the hybrids. A thourly enjoyable read.