To follow up on our previous blog entry, something else most always over looked in the discussion of hybrid vehicles just moving the pollution form the tail pipe to the smoke stack, is Regenerative Braking.
In both conventional and hybrid/electric vehicles energy is used to get the vehicle moving, in other words the fuel is converted in to kinetic energy. However there is a significant difference in how energy is used to get the respective vehicle types stopped.
A conventional vehicle uses friction heating to dissipate the energy that was used to get the vehicle moving in the first place. Applying the brakes causes the brake pads to engage to slow the vehicle to a stop by dissipating the kinetic energy as heat through friction. That heat goes into the environment, and is totally wasted. On some small scale this raises the temperature of the ambient environment, to contribute to possible Global Warming in some small amount.
On the other hand, a properly designed hybrid or electric vehicle will use Regenerative Braking to return the kinetic energy back into stored energy in the systems batteries or capacitors. There will be some small amount of energy lost to the environment, due to the system not being 100% efficient.
The bottom line is that the existing vehicles waste nearly 100% of their stopping energy, while a electric vehicle will recover significant amounts of their stopping energy, which will approach 100% recovery as technology advances.
So now we have two ways that electric vehicles save significant amounts of energy, even when they are still ultimately powered by Coal back at the power plant.
