Karla and I are beginning to look for a new car. As valiantly as the 1997 Pontiac Sunfire has served me, the repairs are starting to pile up, and frankly, don't justify the cost to keep a car with a trade-in value of $450 running and functional. We're seriously looking at a hybrid car, which would serve me well in a job where I drive more than 150 miles a week just for work purposes. Each trip to the city I cover is at least 25 miles; with four or sometimes five trips in a week, the fuel costs can get pretty high. It's not as bad as having to commute 53 miles each way to an internship like I did before I worked here, but it's still not the healthiest for my wallet. So, as much as I'd love to get a Mustang or Life-Sized-Hot-Wheels-Car/Toy-SUV, a hybrid makes the most sense.
What separates a hybrid from a normal car is the use of an electric motor to power the vehicle in specific situations, like accelerating or driving speeds under 30 miles an hour. While the hybrid car is nothing new, the idea of having a hybrid power system using a conventional engine and battery power is nothing new.
Around the turn of the last century, when the submarine was starting to become a viable weapons platform, a problem was discovered. The submarine's conventional engines couldn't be used underwater because there was no way to get air into the combustion chambers without sucking it out of the same atmosphere the crew was relying on to stay alive. So, some genius in Europe came up with a good idea: have an electric motor for use when underwater. The idea made sense: an electric motor doesn't need oxygen and doesn't need an exhaust for fumes because it doesn't generate any. While the speeds were slow (typically 6 knots or so) the idea worked, and the submarine as we know it was born.
It's interesting to think that the same concept used on the U-boats that roamed up and down the East Coast of America in the early 1940s are the logical grandfather of the car my wife and I seek to buy. The arrangement has been improved somewhat since then; instead of having massive banks of conventional batteries, the car we're looking at uses compact lithium ion batteries to keep it small. The submarines and the Prius have this much in common, though: while the conventional engine is used, the batteries are recharged. The early submarines weren't so much undersea vessels as they were vessels that could go undersea for a while. They were faster on the surface of the water. The Germans tried to improve on this concept by having a snorkel (called, appropriately enough, a "schnorkel") on the conning towers of their U-boats, and they were used with some success. Unfortunately, the balance of power in the war had shifted by then, and Allied radar was good enough to pick up the small radar signature of a snorkel as the submarine tried to hide. In the end, it was a good idea too late. A decade after the war, the U.S. introduced the first atomic-powered submarines, and the old method of conventional engine/batteries slowly faded away.
The concept must have hung around in the back of someone's head, because now, instead of being used to cut through Allied convoys on their way England, it's being used to cut through morning traffic on my way to Eden Prairie.
What separates a hybrid from a normal car is the use of an electric motor to power the vehicle in specific situations, like accelerating or driving speeds under 30 miles an hour. While the hybrid car is nothing new, the idea of having a hybrid power system using a conventional engine and battery power is nothing new.
Around the turn of the last century, when the submarine was starting to become a viable weapons platform, a problem was discovered. The submarine's conventional engines couldn't be used underwater because there was no way to get air into the combustion chambers without sucking it out of the same atmosphere the crew was relying on to stay alive. So, some genius in Europe came up with a good idea: have an electric motor for use when underwater. The idea made sense: an electric motor doesn't need oxygen and doesn't need an exhaust for fumes because it doesn't generate any. While the speeds were slow (typically 6 knots or so) the idea worked, and the submarine as we know it was born.
It's interesting to think that the same concept used on the U-boats that roamed up and down the East Coast of America in the early 1940s are the logical grandfather of the car my wife and I seek to buy. The arrangement has been improved somewhat since then; instead of having massive banks of conventional batteries, the car we're looking at uses compact lithium ion batteries to keep it small. The submarines and the Prius have this much in common, though: while the conventional engine is used, the batteries are recharged. The early submarines weren't so much undersea vessels as they were vessels that could go undersea for a while. They were faster on the surface of the water. The Germans tried to improve on this concept by having a snorkel (called, appropriately enough, a "schnorkel") on the conning towers of their U-boats, and they were used with some success. Unfortunately, the balance of power in the war had shifted by then, and Allied radar was good enough to pick up the small radar signature of a snorkel as the submarine tried to hide. In the end, it was a good idea too late. A decade after the war, the U.S. introduced the first atomic-powered submarines, and the old method of conventional engine/batteries slowly faded away.
The concept must have hung around in the back of someone's head, because now, instead of being used to cut through Allied convoys on their way England, it's being used to cut through morning traffic on my way to Eden Prairie.
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