are the car batteries the same as non-hybrid cars? if it’s lithium batteries, why are there no charging ports like ev vehicles?
In: Engineering
To address the part about not having charging ports, I guess what you meant to ask is where the power comes from?
When braking in an internal combustion engine (ICE) car, the kinetic energy from the moving car is converted into heat in the brakes and then the heat is dissipated into the environment (energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted into other forms). In a hybrid, the kinetic energy is used to turn an electric generator inside the car that converts the kinetic energy into electric energy again. Some models also do this when the car is coasting, but that usually results in the car decelerating more quickly when coasting. This process is called “regenerative braking”, lots of good resources on youtube explaning how that works.
Pure electric cars do this too, but it’s not enough to fully charge the much larger batteries to offset the energy used to move the car. Hybrids have much smaller batteries, and the internal combustion engine is used in conjunction with the electric motor, so there’s a smaller demand for electricity, allowing the car not need a charging port at all.
You can’t get infinite energy from this, because there are energy losses during conversion. Don’t quote me on the exact number but I read somewhere that about 60% of the energy is recovered during regenerative braking. Of course, this depends on the specific technologies and techniques used.
Hybrid and electric car owners like going downhill because it recharges the battery. It’s not free energy because they would’ve had to use energy to get up that hill in the first place.
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