How do hybrid vehicles work? How beneficial are they for our all-electric future?

We all have heard about hybrid electric vehicles, but there has been a question that has been wandering my mind for weeks: how exactly do they work? How do you choose when to run it on gasoline versus electricity? I decided to do some quick research and find the answer.

It turns out that there are different kinds of hybrid vehicles and they can be categorized into “mild hybrids” and “full hybrids”. Mild hybrids (aka micro-hybrids) are essentially hybrid cars which have smaller batteries and electric motors and larger engines. This means that the vehicle cannot be powered on electricity alone, however, it still has the environmental benefits of shutting down the car at traffic lights or in traffic jams. Full hybrids, which are more common, have larger batteries and electric engines, and it can power the car for short distances and low speeds, whereas the engine is used for longer distances and higher speeds. And, like the mild hybrid, it can shut down the engine when the car is stationary in traffic.

These levels of hybrid determine the capacity for running on electric energy that your car has. Beyond this, there are different ways the actual car works. The most common hybrid design is the car not having a charging port meaning there is no way to externally charge the battery. The battery essentially charges from the internal combustion engine or when the car brakes, utilizing energy that is normally wasted, which makes it fuel efficient. In this common design, the electric motor and the engine are connected and they both run the wheels.

However, there is a second, less common type of hybrid, which actually does include a plug-in port. This is called a series hybrid. This type of hybrid vehicle only uses the electric motor to run the wheels. This motor is either run from a battery or a gas-powered engine.

These are the basics on how a hybrid vehicle works. In a nutshell, a hybrid vehicle has an electric motor, a battery pack, and an engine. In most hybrids, the battery is charged through the engine or when the car brakes, since there is no charging port or external way to charge it and the wheels run on a combination of the motor and the engine.

From my point of view, hybrid vehicles should not be spent much time on. They are a distraction, a delay. When many people buy hybrid vehicles they think that they have done their duty to the environment, however, the truth is that hybrid vehicles still run on gasoline. And, even though they also run on electricity, most electricity is still produced from coal. Hybrid cars are a distraction from the all-electric future that we need to get to. Electric cars produce significantly less emissions than hybrid cars and we need to go in that direction, not stop at hybrid cars. The development of hybrid cars was a step in the right direction, away from all-gas powered cars, however, in terms of implementation, we need to be promoting and mandating all-electric vehicles, not hybrids. Hybrids are a distraction from where we need to reach. They were a good development, but they are certainly not enough to get us to the green future that we imperatively need to reach.