Hybrids with the best Mpg

From 3arf

Hybrid Cars: The Ford Escape

The Ford Escape Hybrid may not be as mileage efficient as some advertised hybrid vehicles; designed to get up to 60 miles per gallon of gasoline. However, the Escape is an SUV, and getting 36 miles per gallon in mileage, in light of the size, weight, and amount of people that it can carry, all being major factors, it has its own class of vehicle performance. Not only that, but the Escape also carries the factor of attractiveness with it. SUV's are extremely popular in the automobile market currently, and their main competitors are hybrid cars. It's power and acceleration, size and seating capacity versus mileage performance, efficiency, and environmental friendliness. The Ford Escape Hybrid incorporates all of these, resolving the need for both. The Ford manufacturers have patented a brand new hybrid powertrain, that improves performance, and it is predicted that the vehicle will create a major breakthrough in both the industry of hybrid production, and the automotive marketplace.

The hybrid vehicle is basically an attempt to combine the strengths of both the electric motor and the gasoline engines while at the same time, eliminating the weaknesses of both systems. For the conventional, gasoline powered vehicle these problems are that it creates harmful emissions that negatively affect the atmosphere, and the mileage is very poor. For battery powered, electric vehicles, the problems are that they have short battery, and they need to be plugged in to be re-charged, which neither fast or efficient.

The hybrid car contains both the modern combustion engine, though a smaller version, with lighter parts for more efficiency, and an electric motor, that can produce an almost equal amount of horsepower as the gasoline powered engine. In some vehicles these components can work either independently of each other, one power source working the engine, and one power source operating the electric motor, or cooperate together as a whole, to propel the car.

The main components, for the average parallel hybrid vehicle are the fuel tank, the batteries, a four cylinder engine, the transmission, and the electric motor. The fuel tank is the main source of power for the vehicle, and usually produces around five hundred miles or so worth of energy. The batteries are the second main source of power, and store the energy that is regenerated by braking, or from the electric motor. There is also the gasoline powered engine component is the vehicle, a four cylinder engine, much like those within most convention gasoline powered vehicles, except that in the hybrid car they are smaller, and contain lighter parts to make them more efficient.

The electric motor, another main component of the hybrid car, is much like that of an electric car, except smaller, because it doesn't have to power the vehicle on its own. Also, the transmission; however, this part of the vehicle is very dynamic, because the transmission can either be the conventional one, that is in most gasoline powered vehicles, a CVT or "continuously variable transmission," which basically keeps the car in one continuous gear, without ever switching up to a higher or lower gear. Another option for the transmission is the power split device, which connects all the main components in the vehicle, and it implements what is called the planetary gear set, which is a slightly more complicated device that operates in the same capacity as a transmission would.

When the manufacturers responsible for creating the Escape Hybrid started designing, they did not try to build a car from scratch. Instead, they started with the conventional, four cylinder model small SUV, the Ford Escape. The manufacturers at Ford spent five years, and had a hundred engineers working to develop the powertrain for the hybrid version of the Escape. This vehicle is most recognizable as a small SUV, so even considering, it still gets good mileage, even without the hybrid components, or the electric motor; it's rated at 25 miles per gallon, when driving at highway speeds, which is much better mileage than anyone could get with a larger SUV.

Many people are wondering what all the engineers and manufacturers did exactly to change the vehicle so much, considering that the hybrid version looks almost identical to the conventional Escape SUV. In the interior of the vehicle, there is a different type of gauge in the dash; on the exterior, the Hybrid logo on the side, and the vent on the rear of the vehicle to help cool the batteries, are the only actual visible changes that were made, as far as the looks go. This is actually pretty much the whole point. That is why engineers and manufacturers of Ford spent so long designing, and developing the Hybrid Escape; they wanted it to look and function just like an SUV, in which the driver does not need to know any extra knowledge, or particular skill in order to drive it.

The batteries and electric motor were constructed for optimum performance for the life of the vehicle without ever needing any maintenance. Neither is there any kind of need for a meter or anything like that, to show the driver how low the battery is and whether or not it needs to be charged; the driver does not need to even worry about it. The way the hybrid system in the Escape was designed, it was meant to be as invisible to the driver as possible. In general, the hybrid version of the Escape, is just a smaller model of SUV that does not emit as much pollution, or require as much fuel to get great mileage, as the solely gasoline powered competitor models of SUV's. This is the main reason many predict it will have such a heavy impact on the automobile marketplace in the United States. The most innovative, and consumer friendly attribute of the hybrid Escape, is that the manufacturers at Ford Motors made this vehicle in order to make hybrid technology both attractive, and easy for the consumer to become accustomed to.

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