A hybrid car can be actually any car that uses two or more distinct power sources. But since today most of the hybrid cars have an electric motor / combustion engine combination of power sources, we will look into them. So how do hybrid cars work?
Parallel Configuration Hybrid Cars
Most of the hybrid cars today are parallel configuration hybrids. That means that the car can run on just the combustion engine, just the electric motor, or a combination of both. The benefit of this system is the acceleration and power of hybrid car. Using both power sources makes a hybrid car as powerful as a standard car that has a much larger internal combustion engine. The power for the car comes from gas and from onboard bateries.
Hybrid Cars And Low Gas Consumption
Low gas consumption of a hybrid car is related to the small size of the combustion engine, the fact that the engine shuts down when the car stops (like stop lights etc...) and the time when hybrid car operates on electric engine only. A lot of it depends on the onboard computer.
Onboard Computer
The onboard computer takes care of distibuting the power from both engines and decides which engine is more efficient for the given driving conditions.
A few examples:
1. fast acceleration need help from combustion engine
2. driving uphill requires help from combustion engine
3. when you reach a constant speed an a highway there is little additional power needed so hybrid car switches to electric engine...
From here on we can put hybrid cars into two groups:
No External Charge Hybrid Cars
These are hybrid cars with onboard batteries that are charged by combustion engine and can not be charged from an external source.
Plug-in Hybrid cars
Plug-in Hybrid cars have onboard batteries that can be charged from an external source.
In both cases batteries can be also charged while we are braking. The released energy is used to charge batteries and break wear down slower at the same time.
This are the bacis principles on how do hybrid cars work.
