Ever since Ferdinand Porsche, the
famous German automobile engineer invented the hybrid car principle by
the dawn of the twentieth century, the daring idea stayed in car
manufacturer's minds. While the feasibility of such engines rendered
the idea dormant for more than half a century, because internal
combustion engines were dirt cheap, recently more and more car
manufacturers are toying with the idea of a hybrid car. Toyota was the
first one to produce a series car, Honda followed shortly thereafter.
Right now most of the automobile industry is circling around the new
market niche and try to set something into the already crowded space.
Although it is actually an old idea, most of the applied technology
that is being used is brand new, the battery technology, the kinetic
energy conversion and drivetrain principle, just to name a few, were
either newly invented or completely redeveloped. The hybrid cars are
technological wonders and sophisticated computers are needed to control
the whole mumbo jumbo that takes place under the hood. On the other
hand, when something goes wrong, the technician at the repair shop
needs only to connect the onboard computer with the docking station to
figure out what is wrong. While the concept is
also not new, with the hybrids, there are at least half a dozen things
that can go wrong, besides the motor simply getting busted. Naturally,
the technology improves and viewpoints change and the first hybrids
that came out late in the nineties of the twentieth century are not
really up to date. In particular the Toyota Prius and the Ford Escape
Hybrid were already designed with future expansions in mind, or perhaps
just the engineers were lucky, where the currently prevailing idea of
the plug-in hybrid vehicle could be added belatedly. New York State
Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA, has several
people under contract since 2007, in order to convert Ford Escape
Hybrids into the plug-in variant of the hybrid, these companies are
Electrovaya in Toronto, Canada and Hymotion in Toronto Canada, within
the United States borders there is only one contracted company, it is
the Hybrid Plus of Boulder Colorado. These hybrid cars conversion kits
include the addition of the charger and the power plug. Ford internal
conversion and the Hybrid Plus variants in the United States replaces
the original NiMH battery with the more powerful Lithium-Ion battery,
while both of the Canadian versions retain the original and add the
Li-ion battery in the trunk, where it fills up a significant portion of
the available space.

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