Mrs Bin
EXACTLY.

That's what people don't think about with hybrids - what do you do when the battery is conked after 7-8 years, but the rest of the car is OK?

I think there is a future for hybrids, but not with electric motors. A great proportion of the energy consumed by a car in traffic is starting off after being stopped. That's why I've been doing a great deal of research into flywheel hybrids (like the ones at www.flybridsystems.com). On paper at least, the gains are in the region of an electric hybrid but without the environmental costs.

Oh, and Stiggy, diesel/electric hybrids work well (look at railway locomotives) - they even work well in a car too, but they don't deliver anything like the gains over a petrol/electric hybrid that you'd expect. This is partly due to the fact that most petrol hybrids use the Atkinson cycle rather than the Otto cycle of a normal petrol engine. The Atkinson cycle is much closer to a diesel in terms of efficiency than the Otto cycle in the first place, so the gains you see by using a diesel engine in the hybrid aren't quite as you'd expect.

Right. That's it for my car geekery for one evening...
( rubberduck should only be used after consulting with your GP, Mon 29 Sep 2008, 19:56, Reply)