What is Hybrid Electric Vehicle ?

With the electric motor taking charge of the engine during long travels,

They’re considered better for the environment due to the fact they emit no exhaust gases.

more mileage can be achieved with HEVs compared to other types of vehicles.

Popular examples of electric vehicles (often abbreviated to “EV”) include the Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, and Tesla Model S but the choice is expanding rapidly.

Electric vehicles have several key benefits when compared to ordinary petrol and diesel cars, as well as increasingly popular hybrid cars

Electric vehicles emit no pollution at the tailpipe, which means they have a much smaller local environmental impact.

They operate very quietly and are generally extremely easy to drive, with no real gearbox to speak of and a great deal of power at low speeds.

ou can drive an electric car on an automatic-only driving licence.

Most importantly, they can be charged up at home. You can 'refuel' an electric car using an ordinary three-prong plug wherever you find a socket, which is pretty much everywhere

While many owners choose to install a slightly more sophisticated 'plug' at home for faster charging, it's perfectly possible to use the existing setup on your drive or in your garage.

Faster chargers, such as those found in car parks and at petrol stations, are also useful for EV owners.

Disadvantages include that need to ‘charge’ an electric vehicle, which takes far longer than filling a tank of petrol or diesel

usually several hours in comparison to a couple of minutes.

Some electric cars can be half-charged in a shorter time, but this will ordinarily be around 45 minutes.

During this time, the vehicle must be physically connected to a plug socket, which makes EV ownership difficult for a lot of buyers unless you own a driveway or have a charging point at work.

Environmentally, there are still big questions as to where the electricity for electric cars will come from,

with some critics pointing out that the indirect emissions from electric vehicles are comparable to those of a petrol-electric hybrid. And as with any car

much of its lifecycle carbon output is generated as it's being built. We're optimistic that the building process and indeed the sources of electricity will become cleaner,

, but for now the environmental cost of buying and using an electric vehicle is still significant.

The term ‘hybrid’ is technically quite vague, but in the context of cars almost always refers to a petrol-electric powertrain

This means the car uses a combination of electricity stored in batteries and petrol stored in a tank to propel the car forward.

The details of this arrangement will vary from car to car.

A hybrid vehicle will almost always be able to charge its own batteries using the petrol engine.

. In some cases, this is all the petrol engine is there for – to recharge the batteries, which power the electric motors

In other types of hybrid, the petrol motor drives the wheels directly, but an additional battery/motor combination adds some electric drive.