LEGAL ISSUES WITH HYBRID

Legal Issues with Hybrid

Legal Issues with Hybrid

Introduction

Hybrid vehicles have achieved substantially better fuel efficiency than standard automobiles of similar size, promising to bridge the initial period of decline in oil availability. To reduce gasoline use even further, plug-in hybrids will be an interim part of the vehicle mix. The multiple sources of electric power—coal, natural gas, nuclear, and renewable— will become available to the plug-ins. As oil availability declines further in coming decades, it will be necessary to dispense with internal combustion engines altogether and completely to electric vehicles powered by renewable sources, if indeed private automobiles survive at all. Of course, driving less also will be necessary at all stages to achieve the fuel and energy reductions that will be required. Current vehicles waste significant energy even beyond the low efficiency of their engines. They consume fuel even when no motive power is required, as in going downhill, slowing, or stopped in traffic. Energy invested in accelerating the vehicles is lost as heat in braking. The engines consume excessive fuel because they must be large enough to provide peak power that is required (Yamamoto, 2000).

There are various legal and ethical issues regarding hybrid vehicles. The dominant problem with conventional cars is that they burn fossil fuels. The main problem with electric cars is that they have a limited range. The hybrid car is a halfway-house solution to these issues which combines an electric motor with an internal combustion engine. The electric assistance allows the conventional engine to work less hard, so less fuel is burned and emissions are reduced. Hybrids use the car's kinetic energy to recharge their batteries, so they can maintain their power reserves, ready to muck in when the driver puts the pedal to the metal.

The green credentials of a hybrid car depend greatly on what hybrid it is and how it is used. By taking the strain off the internal combustion engine, the electric motor will always reduce fuel consumption to an extent, but the batteries add weight to the vehicle, forcing the drive train to work harder. There is also the issue of recharging the batteries. Hybrids recover kinetic energy when coasting or under braking (Anderson, 2004). On long, high speed motorway trips that force hybrids to lean more on their internal combustion engines, the fuel economy benefits are limited. As you may have gathered from all this, the term hybrid is more complex than it might appear at first glance. As a result, the question of whether you should buy one is too. Brake-energy regeneration and stop-start technology are already commonplace in all kinds of cars that we would not class as hybrids and they are only going to get more so. If we limit our definition of hybrid to cars with wheels that driven exclusively or in part by electric motors, the choices are much more limited but again, that is changing fast.

The official fuel economy figures for these vehicles are undeniably attractive, but how close owners get to them ...