Is Hybrid Car The Best Environmental Option?

A hybrid car is a car powered by two different sources: an electric motor and an internal combustion engine which propels the car. The hybrid recaptures energy through a process known as regenerative braking -- where the energy normally lost through braking or coasting goes to power the electric motor.

According to Earth-Policy.org, if the United States replaced its entire fleet of passenger cars with "super-efficient" hybrids such as these over the next 10 years, gasoline use would be slashed in half.

Public hybrid buses have been tested in New York to some success, according to the EDTA, which says the buses emit 90 percent less particulate matter and 30 percent fewer greenhouse gases than regular diesel buses. Hybrid cars are also taking off in a big way in Sweden, which also is recording faster drops in CO2 emissions from new cars than any other European nation. (Europe's market share of global hybrid sales is still very small, estimated at less than 8 percent. The U.S. remains the world's biggest hybrid car market with 70 percent market share.)

The main objections to hybrid technology are:
- regard purchasing and maintenance costs
- limited fuel economy on long-distance drives
- faltering battery levels at high speeds
- added car weight (hybrids tend to be 10 percent heavier than a similar sized car, according to NewCarPark.com)
- conversely, negative environmental impacts, more energy is required to build a hybrid as it is a more complicated vehicle; it requires more copper wire than a regular car; and its battery which weighs more than 100 pounds is a potential environmental hazard, critics say.

But mainly, the questions many people have with hybrids is that they still rely on gasoline and they still pollute the atmosphere. While Earth-Policy says that hybrids could slash U.S. gasoline use in half, if it applied that same methodology to plug-in hybrids, you could cut gasoline use by 70 percent.

The advantage plug-in hybrids have over regular hybrids, its proponents say, is you can power them by electricity alone. They carry larger batteries than conventional hybrids, which, when recharged (by plugging them into the national grid) will give drivers up to 60 miles of without any emissions at all.

A U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) study found that 73 percent of the nearly 217 million vehicles on America's roads could be charged with existing power plants to generate the electricity to charge the cars -- and greenhouse gases would fall by 27 percent as a result.

The new challenge would then be using existing power plants using coal or nuclear power. The DoE study also found that particulate emissions would increase with the power grid having to charge all these vehicles. The panacea is a car which produces no emissions at all -- some will say that it is an electric car, others say it is the fuel cell vehicle. For now, though, hybrid cars are possibly the best environmental option on the road.