Friday, July 13, 2012

Automotive Articles Blog: Choosing Between Hybrid and Diesel ...

ByDanny Ha

If you have ever wanted a car that could achieve better fuel economy now is quite a good time to be shopping for a car that uses relatively little fuel for traveling any given distance. There are a few different ways that various automakers get their cars to achieve higher MPG numbers so we'll go over a few of them and you can decide what type of car will work best for your needs.

Toyota is an example of a car company that has decided to go with hybrid drive trains as its route towards higher fuel economy on models like the Prius and the Highlander Hybrid. If you are not familiar with hybrid drive systems that's okay because we're about to look a little deeper into the topic so you can understand how the system works and whether you want a vehicle with hybrid drive or not.

In a hybrid drive system a vehicle usually has a small or middle sized petrol engine paired with a battery pack and electric motors. When the vehicle is stopped -at a traffic light for example- the petrol powered engine shuts off to save fuel and the electric motors stand by for the driver to release the brake and step on the accelerator. When the driver accelerates the electric motors propel the car for some distance or up until the vehicle reaches a certain speed. After that point the petrol engine will start automatically and begin to help propel the vehicle on up to higher speeds.

Obviously in order to operate the electric engines the vehicle needs a lot of battery power. Hybrid cars handle these power needs by producing electricity through the harvesting of energy from the braking system. Typically brakes burn off the energy of a car's forward motion through heat but a hybrid drive car captures some of that energy through regenerative braking. This is the reasons that hybrid cars often do just as well on fuel in urban driving as they do in more efficient motorway cruising.

A second method of getting great fuel economy from a car is to install an efficient diesel engine in the vehicle in question. There are a number of automakers who are quite good at producing powerful and efficient diesel cars. BMW, Audi, VW and Jaguar are a few examples. Often times you can actually get better fuel economy from a good turbocharged diesel model than you can get from a hybrid and today's diesel models are quite good at keeping potentially harmful exhaust emissions to a minimum.

For the most part it seems that diesel technology is the more proven and sometimes more efficient way of producing cars that can travel a great distance on a gallon of fuel. Many drivers like the torque and driving characteristics of diesel cars as well. You may want to test drive both hybrid and diesel models before making your choice to see what type you prefer.

Finding the best MPG cars doesn't have to be hard and with a little research you should be able to find a model that will save you quite a bit of money at the pump. Just remember to try and calculate the total cost of ownership so that you don't spend more on an efficient car than it will return in fuel savings.

Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert

Source: http://automotivearticlesblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/choosing-between-hybrid-and-diesel.html

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