With the dawn of the ultra cheap
cars, starting with the Indian Tata Motors "Tata Nano", expected to
cost somewhere around two thousand dollars, to the Fiat 500, the
pressure was great to pull something new. One of the market leaders,
Toyota, faced almost bankruptcy and came out with a hybrid vehicle, the
Toyota Prius. The sales were good, the environmental data was great,
with proper public relations propaganda, the interest was only
increasing. A market niche was discovered in a very crowded pool, many
people jumped all happy about the new kind of a car, you can drive it
as an electric, but you still have the conventional engine thrown in,
sound good, doesn't it? But which cars with hybrid motors are any good?
There is the already mentioned Prius. Toyota was the first company to
dare venturing into the new frontiers, invested a lot of money into the
research and development and also dared to try something new. Prius is
in the third generation, which should count for something, they worked
on it until it is just simply good and if you are considering a hybrid
car, then without question, one of the contestants has to be Toyota
Prius. A parallel hybrid, meaning that you have both, a combustion
engine and the electric motor running, with the combustion engine being
shut off in order to reduce fuel use and exhaust fumes, Toyota has
their own technology, the Hybrid Synergy Drive. They plan to offer the
hybrid option for every single car they have in the lineup sometimes
this following decade.
Since that we mentioned Tata Motors, they have a hybrid in the works,
which has an electric motor powering compressed air, which propels the
car. The power is used to fill the tanks with air. Secondary engines,
should the user run out of air, will be provided. The car's name is
supposed to be Tata OneCAT. The development is done by the Motor
Development International, native of Luxembourg.
Chevrolet decided to jump on the hybrid bandwagon and has just recently
released three hybrids, a midsize car Chevrolet Malibu, which is a mild
hybrid, Chevrolet Tahoe, an SUV model and the Chevrolet Silverado
Hybrid, a full sized pickup truck. The latter two models feature AHS II
engines, which are a joint development of a team of car manufacturing
companies, General Motors, which owns the Chevrolet trademark, Daimler,
the German
Mercedes giant, Chrysler LLC, the owner of Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep
brands, and the last in this foursome is the other German giant, BMW.
The AHS II is similar to Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive.

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