Hybrid cars becoming readily available to consumers

Vehicles powered with battery packs, friction from brakes converted into electrical energy

Andrew S. High / News Editor

When most consumers think of hybrid cars, they think of rinky-dink four-cylinder cars that hop from 0-60 mph, oh, about two years flat. That’s not the case anymore.

Honda and Toyota are the two leading manufacturers when it comes to hybrid cars on the road today.

Janet MacFall, an associate professor of biology at Elon University, drives a Toyota Prius. The sedan, which MacFall bought in 2001 with 300 miles on it, now has more than 90,000.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “I can fit four people in it comfortably, with two bales of hay. I can pass anyone on the highway I want to.”

Honda’s 2005 Accord features 240 horsepower. The hybrid version offers consumers 255 horsepower and significantly better gas mileage.

Gene Willets, the general sales manager at the Honda dealership on Church Street, said gas mileage is one thing that draws consumers to hybrid vehicles.

“The electric motors give more horsepower than the gas engine,” Willets said. “The electric ups the ante. The December allocation will be the first hybrids, and we found out today that it’s actually going to be the most powerful Accord we’ve ever had.”

Hybrid vehicles power their electric motors by using battery packs. The battery packs are charged when the vehicles brake. Friction from the brakes is converted into electrical energy and stored in the batteries. Most hybrid cars are capable of reaching speeds of 10 mph on battery power alone.

“If the car doesn’t need the power from the gas engines, it uses the electric engines,” said David Satterfield, a salesman for the dealership. “If it stops at a stoplight, and the batteries are charged up, everything shuts down and it’s completely silent because the gas engine is off. If you let off the brake, the electric engine starts up and the car takes off.”

The Burlington Honda dealership offers the Insight, a hatchback now in limited distribution after a wide debut a few years ago, but its best-selling hybrid vehicle is the Civic, which gets 51 miles per gallon during city driving. The 2005 hybrid Civic starts at $19,650; the conventional-fuel-source Civic starts at $13,160. The difference in price closed after tax break available to the consumer for buying a fuel-efficient vehicle.

“At times we have people standing in line waiting for us to get them in,” Satterfield said. “We don’t have as much supply as for the gasoline engines but normally we can get them pretty quick here. (The Civic) is just something that doesn’t stay here very long. We wish they’d make more of them.”

Satterfield explained the Civic gets a few less miles per gallon during highway driving than city driving but that it shouldn’t be something that turns off a possible buyer.

“The reason it does is most of the power from the battery pack is generated from using the brakes,” he said. “It takes energy to convert the energy back into the battery pack. In the city, you’re going to use the brakes more, charge up that battery more, and the electric engine is going to run more than it is on the highway.”

Contact Andrew S. High at pendulum@elon.edu or 278-7247.