Imagine Never Having To Fill Gas In Your Toyota Prius
Hybrid cars that could never need you to fill gas? It could happen in the near future. How, you ask? Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles or PHEV for short. A PHEV is a hybrid electric vehicle that allows you to recharge the electric battery simply by plugging it into a wall socket.
There are no commercial PHEV cars available on the market just yet. There are several companies selling after market kits to convert your hybrid electric car to a PHEV. Conventional Hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius charge the battery while the car is running on gasoline.
There are experiments being conducted with an additional electric battery in conventional hybrid cars such as the Prius. A PHEV allows you to charge the battery through a renewable source of energy at a cost of about 10c per Kwh. The experiments have shown that a single charge on the converted Prius can can take you about 30 miles at a cost of less than 50c. Theoretically, if you traveled shorter distances between charges you would never have to pay for gas.
However, car manufacturers are not jumping on the PHEV bandwagon just yet. High price of batteries and the additional weight and space requirements are keeping them from using these yet.
To reduce our dependency on middle east Oil, this is the way of the future. With the support from powerful sources such as the US President, independent engineers are plugging away at making the Plug-in a reality. Companies such as Google are supporting innovation by offering grants. Google has even built a new parking garage on its campus that has electric outlets for pluggable cars.
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