Hybrid Evolution | Green Energy News

December 18, 2005 – Vol.10 No.39

HYBRID EVOLUTION.

Hybrids may always be more expensive than conventional cars and trucks. The additional components that make hybrids hybrids - the battery pack, the electric drive motor, specialized transmissions (as in Toyota’s Synergy Drive) and electronic controls - are all expensive. How much more expensive is the question.

Honda is now saying that the cost premium for the hybrid drive in the Civic will drop a third to $1700 within 5 years. And, that by then the gasoline-only, conventional Civic will be dropped in the home market. Japanese customers will be able to get the hybrid only. There, the Civic is rated in Japanese drive cycle fuel economy testing as getting about 74 miles per gallon, twice what the conventional car is rated at. (In the U.S. the 2006 next-generation Civic rates a combined 50 miles per gallon. The testing is quite different.)

The new Civic hybrid seems to be evolving as well into what could eventually be a plug-in hybrid. The car has the ability to cruise on electric power alone up to about 35 miles per hour. Of course acceleration must be bog-slow and the terrain board-flat to keep the gasoline motor from kicking in.

For additional traction to the plug-in hybrid movement, the Plug-in Hybrid Development Consortium has added electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE) as a founding member. SCE joins another U.S. west coast utility, Pacific Gas & Electric (PGE), along with energy storage and electric drive motor manufacturers in the effort to steer major car manufacturers to build cars that will be able to drive the first 25 -50 miles each day on electric power alone.

Cars could be recharged from the power grid, from renewable energy if available, and the vehicle’s gasoline motor would kick-in only for longer trips or to recharge the vehicle’s batteries if they are drained.

The technology could be made available as an aftermarket kit in 2006 by EDrive. Visit them at http://www.edrivesystems.com/ and the Plug-in Hybrid Development Consortium at http:www.hybridconsortium.org/ .