Hybrid cars, also called hybrid electric
vehicles are vehicles that use more than one fuel source for moving, the two
sources employed in today’s hybrids being an internal combustion engine and an
electric motor driven by a special, high-capacity ima battery pack.
Hybrid vehicles seem to have become widespread
only recently, but as a matter of fact, the first hybrid car was designed by
Ferdinand Porsche – initially, he created an all-electric car for the Paris
World Expo in 1900, but he soon added a conventional engine to the
construction. After that, several engineers, inventors and auto makers on both
sides of the ocean experimented with hybrid technology, but hybrid cars started
to be mass produced only during the last decades of the 20th
century, two of the first really popular models being the Toyota Prius and the
Honda Insight.
Today, almost all the important auto makers
have at least one line-up of hybrid cars. The technology is continuously
developed to create cars that have a more powerful electric motor, one that can
propel the car on longer distances and at higher speeds. Hybrid cars are also
becoming larger and the internal combustion engines that they are fitted with
are becoming better and better in terms of fuel efficiency.
