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Hybrid Automobile Technology Essay

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For many years, automakers have been attempting to design a viable electric vehicle. It has long been known that oil is a finite resource and with the demands for oil largely driven by America's demands, as well as the ever-increasing demands of other industrialized nations, both automakers and governments have long been desiring of a pollution-free alternative that does not rely on oil and gasoline to run.

Why, then, have such efforts, with all the time and money spent on them, been largely unsuccessful? The answer is not a simple one, for there are many factors which act as driving forces in this case.

First, it is important to examine why the development of an electric, pollution-free vehicle, or at the very least the …show more content…

Many conflicting studies have taken place on the effects of our pollution, and it is beyond the scope of this writing to analyze whether, in fact, a real threat exists. However, there is certainly a very real possibility of such a threat of pollution seriously affecting our climate, and as a result, pollution is a driving force as well as oil demands in the production and development of electric vehicles. In this case, though, the demand for oil would be a much more important driving force as it is economic in nature and people tend to be much more motivated by economic factors than environmental ones -- especially considering that the next oil crisis is likely to be far worse than that which took place in the 1970s if a transition to a renewable fuel source does not take place.

Because of these factors automakers have been attempting to design electric automobiles for a number of years. Electric-only vehicles suffer from the problems of lack of battery life, poor acceleration and speed, limited driving distance, and high cost compared to their better-performing gasoline counterparts. As a result, efforts to market purely electric

vehicles have largely failed. Consumers simply will not purchase a product that performs worse in nearly all measurable aspects, and pay a higher cost to do so. In our current society where oil is still plentiful, an alternative market would need to be found for an electric vehicle to do

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