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History
As with any new product on the market, consumers are skeptical until the product has proven itself. Many car buyers are wary of HEVs thinking that although they may get better mileage, they might have to give up something else. To meet the public's acceptance, a car must meet specific conditions: drive a minimum of 300 miles (482 km) between re-fueling, fill-up promptly and drive fast enough to match traffic.
Gas-powered cars meet these specifications but with poor mileage for the most part and high toxic emissions. An electric-powered car cannot go more than 100 miles (161 km) between re-charging, is difficult to re-charge and doesn't drive beyond 60 mpg, although it emits little pollution. The HEV has been developed to take the best of the gas engine, which is power and speed and combine it with the best of the electric motor, which is fuel efficiency and low emissions - with no more plugging in to recharge the battery!
Hybrid vehicles have been around since before the current crop of consumer HEVs. Train locomotives, buses, submarines and various commercial vehicles have employed a diesel-electric mix for years. Yet we are still in the infancy of the development of hybrid cars. As with computers, automobile technology is ready to make huge leaps, and we can only guess what each new year's crop of cars will bring.
For those interested in a brief history of the evolution of the hybrid, alternate forms of transportation date back to the 18th century (and possible earlier) when France produced a steam-powered motor carriage that could travel six miles per hour. In the 19th century a British inventor produced a car with a steam engine that journeyed 85 miles in 10 hours. A Scot built the first electric vehicle around the same time, and another Englishman shortly thereafter assembled a car with an electric motor and storage batteries, although with mediocre performance. In the U.S. a Vermont blacksmith produced an electric motor powered carriage in the late 1830s.
Several other attempts were made at electric-powered vehicles during the latter part of the 19th century primarily in England, including a carriage using a 24-cell battery and one-horsepower motor and a 40-cell battery and three-horsepower motored taxicab. At the end of the 1800s, a Connecticut manufacturer produced hundreds of electric cars, a New York cab company ran 12 electric vehicles and a German named Dr. Ferdinand Porsche manufactured a front-wheel drive electric car, followed by a hybrid utilizing an internal combustion engine with electric motors. This may be the first forerunner of today's hybrid. At around the same time General Electric built a hybrid prototype as did another German named Siemens.
At the turn of the century, American manufacturers were producing more than 1,500 steam and electric cars and nearly 1,000 gas cars. Several thousand cabs, buses and trucks were developed by the Electric Vehicle Company in the early 20th century and in 1904 Henry Ford burst on the transportation scene with his first assembly line manufacturing gasoline-powered vehicles. His production methods for cars powered by gas engines foretold doom for all other vehicle types being developed - at least for commercial consumption. Witness in 1913 when sales of electric cars dipped to 6,000, while more than 180,000 Ford Model Ts were sold. As the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine improved over the years, most other companies experimenting with an assortment of different modes of transportation fell by the wayside.
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