Buy a Hybrid Car?
In an age of fluctuating gasoline prices, hybrid cars can seem like automotive salvation. But are hybrids really the answer for everyone?
How Does a Hybrid Work?
As you engage the accelerator, the electric motor is in charge. When you gradually increase speed to about 15 miles per hour, or when you need to put the pedal to the metal, the gasoline engine kicks in and takes you to your desired speed. Then the computer takes over and, depending on conditions, makes all the decisions about whether to use the battery, the engine, or both to propel the car.
In urban jungles and other stop-and-go traffic conditions, hybrids primarily use their electric motor and rely on the gas engine only for rapid accelerations. At stop lights, the engine shuts down if the batteries are fully charged. Otherwise the car idles to continue charging the battery.
At higher cruising speeds, the gasoline engine generally powers the car. However, hybrid engines are smaller than those in conventional cars. They can maintain momentum at previously established cruising speeds on freeways and other similar byways, but require help from the electric motor to accelerate quickly or tackle a steep hill.
That motor is powered by a battery that gets its energy from the gasoline engine when it’s on and from a technology called regenerative braking. When you press the brake pedal in a hybrid, you’re sending a command to your electric motor to reverse itself and stop the car. This also turns the motor into an electric generator that can recharge the battery.
What’s a Tesla?
The Tesla is a 100% pure electric car -- it doesn’t use any gasoline at all. Instead, you simply plug it in, charge it’s batteries in about three hours or so, then drive as many as 250 miles before you need to recharge.
What Should I Drive?
The Tesla sells for about $109,000, which keeps it out of the mainstream.
Hybrids aren’t perfect, either. With 30 lbs. of nickel in its battery, the typical hybrid requires about 113 million BTUs of energy to manufacture. This means the hybrid has consumed the energy equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gas before it’s even been driven off the lot, a "carbon debt" it won’t pay off in carbon savings until its odometer hits 46,000 miles.
Assuming you have a car that gets at least 30 mpg, the best answer may be to just keep using the car you already own. Any carbon debt these vehicles incurred at birth has already been paid off via the gas savings you’ve achieved over its lifetime when compared to national mileage averages. If your car gets fewer than 30 mpg, consider a more fuel efficient conventional model, or a hybrid.
Regardless of the kind of vehicle you drive, there are plenty of things you can do to boost its gas mileage. In fact, we explain in the show that no matter what car you’re currently driving, you can improve your gas mileage by 10-20% just by changing your driving habits. That’s important to do because if we could each achieve 35 miles per gallon, America could end its dependence on the oil-rich Middle East.
Here are our tips to better gas mileage:
- Keep your tires properly inflated to improve gas mileage by about 3%.
- Consult your car’s manual and use its recommended grade of motor oil to improve your gas mileage by 1–2%. Brands with “Energy Conserving” on the API performance symbol contain friction-reducing additives that further enhance engine performance.
- Keep your engine properly tuned. Simply replacing a faulty oxygen sensor, for example, can improve gas mileage up to 40%.
- Check and replace air filters regularly. Replacing a dirty air filter can improve gas mileage by as much as 10%.
- When running errands, plan the shortest, most gas-saving itinerary. Combine errands and avoid retracing your steps. Several short trips taken from a cold engine start can use twice as much fuel as a longer multi-stop trip of a similar distance.
- Don’t speed. Gas mileage declines rapidly above 60 mph. Each 5 mph increase above 60 is equal to paying an additional 20 cents to 25 cents per gallon.
- Mellow out. Aggressive driving wastes gas and can lower your mileage by 33 percent at highway speeds and 5 percent in town. Replace jack-rabbit starts from a dead stop with slow acceleration.
- Shut off your engine when idling for long periods of time in traffic and elsewhere. The typical car uses less gas to start up than it does to idle for 60 seconds.
- If you have it, use cruise control on the highway to save gas. But don’t engage it on hilly secondary roads—it will only make your engine work harder.
