Green Powered Cars : Hybrid, Hydrogen Fuel Cell, and Air Powered

Everyone is going green these days. We are going to sustainable energy from our power companies to bring electricity into our homes. In time as more people go green the greenhouse gas emissions will go down significantly in the decades to come. Going green has branched out into the auto industry. Cars, trucks and SUVs are in high demand, but the price of gas is so high that no one can afford to drive them; so the auto industry has been making a change, and there are more changes to come. We already have hybrid cars, and hydrogen fuel cell cars, and soon we will have an air powered car. By 2010 there will be a plant in New Paltz, New York to build the first air powered cars.

Some of the most popular vehicles on the market now are hybrids. Hybrids have 2 motors; one is a gasoline engine, while the other is an electrical engine. When you start the car up you start it with the gasoline engine, then the electrical engine comes on and the gasoline engine cuts off and only turns on when needed. Gas mileage in some vehicles go up to 46 mph.

The Toyota Prius is a 110 horsepower midsized hatchback and it gets more than 50 mpg on the highway, and can go from 0 to 60 in just 11 seconds. You can see the Toyota Prius here. The Honda Civic gets 45 mpg for its 110 horsepower engines. Both cars are have 2 motors and the combined horsepower equals 110 hp. The electric engines run at 20 hp by themselves, and when needed the gas motor kicks in to give a hand. You never hear the engines switch back and forth. I was fortunate to ride in a friend's new Honda Civic and I couldn't hear the engines switch back and forth.

The Chevy Sequel is the first totally electric car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The car gets 300 miles on a small tank of hydrogen. The hydrogen fuel cell acts like a battery. There is a anode and a cathode. Hydrogen is fed through a little tube to the anode, and oxygen is fed through to the cathode, and together this makes an electrical circuit, because there is a chemical reaction that takes place.