HYBRID CARS

by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

All information in this article is solely the opinion of the author and for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease health condition.

Definition. A hybrid car is one that uses two types of drive systems, rather than one. A better word would be a combination drive car, rather than a hybrid car.

The most common type of hybrid car is one that uses a gasoline motor to generate electricity. The electricity then goes to an electric motor that drives the wheels.

The gas motor runs at one or perhaps two speeds all the time, or it may shut off completely if one is just going a short distance.

Other possibilities. Other types of combination drives are possible:

- a gas or diesel motor could compress air and then a compressed air motor could drive the wheels.

- a gas motor could pump water or some other fluid and that fluid could be used to drive the car.

- a gas motor could turn water into steam and then a steam engine could be used to drive the wheels of the car.

RUINED BY REGULATIONS

Mother Earth News, around 1955, had plans to build a hybrid car. It used a small 3-cylinder diesel motor to run a generator and got about 100 miles per gallon of gasoline. (I don’t recall the issue of the magazine.)

However, today’s hybrids don’t get nearly that kind of gas mileage. The only reason is that carefully crafted government regulations prevent it. Some of the regulations are discussed below. For more details, read The Regulatory State.

EXCEPTIONS TO THIS ARTICLE

Most big ocean-going ships and most trains are already diesel-electric hybrids. Diesel is a type of internal combustion engine that is very similar to our car engines.

ADVANTAGES OF PROPERLY DESIGNED HYBRID CARS (not the ones we have today)

- Running the gas motor at one speed all the time in a hybrid vehicle causes much less wear and tear on the motor.

- Electric motors have full torque at all speeds. Gas motors require gears to adjust the speed of the motor. Electrics require no gears! The result is that they do not require a fancy, costly transmission. To shift into reverse, you just flip a switch and run the motor backwards.

This would save thousands of dollars on the cost of the car and reduce maintenance costs. It also would reduce the weight of the vehicle by a hundred pounds or more, which saves fuel.

- Electric motors can be temporarily loaded to give added power in emergencies. This cannot be done with gas motors. Gas motors in our cars must be much larger than needed for everyday driving in order to be prepared for emergencies such as climbing a steep hill or rapid acceleration. This adds a lot of weight to the car and wastes lots of gasoline.

- With an electric motor, you can run down the battery to handle an emergency situation to get extra power. When the emergency is over, you just recharge the battery. You cannot do this with a gas motor. This is another reason that the gas motor in a car must be much larger than needed for everyday driving. Once again, this adds weight and complexity and wastes lots of gasoline.

- When you stop at a traffic light, stop sign or traffic jam, an electric motor shuts off. This is not done with gas motors, and it wastes a lot of gasoline. At any moment in time, millions of gas-powered cars around the world are just sitting with the motor running, wasting fuel.

- With electric drive, you can have regenerative braking. This means when you step on the brake, it turns the electric motor into a generator. This recharges the car’s batteries. This can save a lot of energy and improve the gas mileage. It also reduces wear on the brakes. Government regulations do not permit this simple innovation in today’s hybrids.

- With electric drive, you can put solar cells on the roof and recharge the battery all day while your car sits outside in the sun. Government regulations do not permit this simple innovation in today’s hybrids.

- Electric motors are clean. Internal combustion motors tend to burn fuel incompletely and are inherently dirty running machines. The problem is worse when the motor is speeding up and slowing down all the time, as it does in a regular car.

A hybrid improves this problem by running the gas motor at a preset and optimum speed all of the time. This makes it more clean-burning. As a result, hybrids should not need expensive catalytic converters and other pollution control equipment that adds a few thousand dollars to the cost of very car today. Car makers are still forced to put all the same pollution devices on hybrids, even though they should run much cleaner because they don’t change speeds.

- Electric motors are quiet and run cooler. As a result, hybrids require less equipment that muffles the sound of the motor and less fancy cooling systems, both of which add cost and weight and increase maintenance costs. The small gas motor in a hybrid car still needs a small muffler, but it may not need a cooling system.

- Electric motors are very simple devices with basically one moving part. They are basically maintenance free! This saves a lot of money. When I lived in Boston, Massachusetts, they were still running the same 80-year-old electric trollies with the same electric motors because they require so little maintenance.

Gas motors have hundreds of moving parts. They also require fancy setups so they will start well in cold weather, in wet weather and in other conditions. Electrics have none of these problems.

- Safety. If the gas motor fails in a hybrid vehicle, you can still drive to a repair shop on battery power. This is a safety feature.

- With a hybrid, you don’t need drive shafts and differentials. The motors can be inside the wheels. This simplifies the car and reduces its initial cost and maintenance cost. For example, on front wheel drive cars today, a common part that breaks and costs a hundred dollars plus to replace are the rubber boots on the universal joints of the front axles. Motors in the wheel are not permitted in current hybrids.

- Electric motors in the wheels also provides four-wheel drive without needing extra axles, universal joints and a fancier transmission. Four-wheel drive is an excellent safety advantage, especially in cold climates. Motors in the wheel are not permitted on current hybrids.

- Lead-acid batteries for hybrids, which are called deep-cycle batteries, are very inexpensive and work well. Lead-acid batteries are not allowed in hybrids today. (Lithium batteries that are required in today’s hybrid cars are VERY EXPENSIVE and they, too, pollute.)

- Hybrid cars can easily be designed to work with various kinds of charging systems or motors. When a better gasoline, diesel, turbine or fuel cell comes along, you could literally just lift our the old one and put in the new one.

- Hybrids do not emit much electromagnetic radiation or microwave radiation. Some are claiming that they put out a lot of EMF, but to the best of our knowledge they do not if they are well-designed.

Gas-powered cars require high-voltage spark coils and are continuously sparking, which puts out some EMF that the electrics and hybrids do not put out.

All the “not allowed” regulations makes today’s hybrids needlessly expensive and not very good. This is not an accident, in our view. (see the next section)

DISADVANTAGES OF HYBRIDS

- Batteries add weight to the car. However, a lot of batteries are not really needed. Power can come mainly from the gas motor, not from batteries.

- One needs to install a heating coil because the very small gas motor in the hybrid might not supply enough heat in the winter. Hybrids can use a heat pump – an efficient device that both heats and air conditions.

- Lighter weight cars can be more dangerous in a collision. However, this is a design problem that can be solved through better vehicle design.

- The oil companies would make much less money.

- The planet would be much cleaner and the Rogues don’t like that idea.

EVEN BETTER – OSCILLATING MOTORS, JOE CELLS AND ETHERIC DRIVE

OSCILLATING MOTORS

Nicola Tesla discovered a much simpler internal combustion engine with very few moving parts. Our gas motors reciprocate, which means the pistons go up and down and are connected to a camshaft that rotates.

His motor had one or more cylinders that just move back and forth, which is called oscillation. It is much simpler and much more efficient. A man named Bourke built an aircraft engine based on the same principle. They are not permitted due to regulations today.

JOE CELLS

Joseph Newman and others used a little device that looks like several concentric cylinders filled with water to generate a gas that will power an internal combustion motor or a gas or steam turbine, which are external combustion motors. This just means the combustion of the fuel occurs outside of a cylinder. This is not permitted by regulations.

ETHERIC POWER

More than one hundred years ago, Nicola Tesla had a Pierce Arrow car that he converted to etheric drive. This just means that it used the ether that is everywhere around us to run an electric motor to drive the car.

This is “old” technology, but it is still not permitted on earth. The same free energy can power everything – our homes, factories, farm equipment, aircraft and everything else.

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