Boom

Internal combustion fuelled transport has always been a problem (at least for environmentalists) since pollution started coming into the picture. This of course presented an almighty business opportunity to the world's leading automotive manufacturers, who decided that the world needs something that sips as little fuel as possible. Naturally, everyone decided that the best way to go about this business would be to come up with a vehicle that runs mainly on fuel but is assisted via electrical means wherever possible so as to reduce emissions while increasing mileage (we're looking at you, Toyota). And so, the hybrid was born.

For the ignoramuses among you who still don't know what a hybrid is, let me explain: A hybrid is a vehicle that is propelled by two or more different sources of power, and in most cases it would be a combination of petrol/diesel and electricity. The whole point of this is to save on fuel and more importantly, cut down on those nasty, nasty things that come out of a car's tail pipe as the electricity is supposed to assist the car in moving so that less petrol would be needed.

Now I shall attempt to explain to you how exactly a hybrid works, and this might get a bit technical depending on whether or not you finished your primary school education so bear with me. A hybrid essentially consists of an internal combustion engine, a very big lithium-ion battery (the same kind you'd find behind your cell phone) and electric motors, usually one at each wheel. The batteries power the electric motors which are used to assist the car when accelerating, and because a car uses more power as it goes faster, this is supposed to help save on fuel. Most hybrids also have the option of only running on batteries at low speeds, usually up to 40km/h, which eliminates fuel use altogether and of course emissions. Each motor also acts as a generator which charges the batteries when the car is coasting down or whenever the brakes are applied. This is the reason why so many Hollywood celebrities have chosen the unholy Prius as their runabout of choice in their miserable attempts to gain green credentials.

As green as all this sounds, there is, however, one little niggle: The process involved in making a hybrid vehicle like a Prius actually does more damage to the environment than said Prius would be able to redeem in its entire petrol-and-emission saving life. This is because the bits needed to make the battery like lead and magnesium are actually rather toxic and need to be mined and then shipped from various parts of the world to the place where the batteries are made, and any idiot can tell you that mining releases the sort of things that would make Mother Nature flinch. Then of course the raw material is shipped by means of huge barges that release the wrath of their engines into the unsuspecting atmosphere.

So there you go, the Prius isn't actually as green as it seems. Hybrids are also rather expensive, so it would be better to just get a small car with a small engine because that would use about the same amount of petrol as a Prius. Then there was the time Top Gear put a Prius on a track, told it to go as fast as it could and had a BMW M3 follow it, and surprise, surprise, the Prius actually drank more petrol than the M5. Now this makes the Prius look quite bad when you consider that an M3 has a big-bore V8, which just proves that a hybrid wouldn't be all that good if you were to drive it on the Autobahn at high speeds.

Renault recently came up with a tiny two cylinder engine that put out as much power as a four cylinder engine twice its size with just a fraction of its emissions. Now there is a very real possibility that cars having engines like this would make hybrids obsolete and unnecessary since the process of making one is exactly the same as that of other conventional cars.

This brings us to the question of whether or not hybrids are still relevant, and the answer would depend on whether or not engineers can figure out a nicer way to make their batteries, otherwise it will be much better if we just stick to small engines like the one mentioned above.