Hybrid Vehicles Becoming More Diverse

It started with the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight. Though these are still the most prevelant hybrid vehicles on the market today, the more progressive car companies are starting to get rolling with their hybrid lines. Canadian Driver Magazine is conducting a long term test on the Honda Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius Hybrid looking at how hybrid vehicles perform in the Canadian driving environment.

Hybrid Long-term Test: 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid and 2006 Toyota Prius, runs down the differences and similarities of the two cars paying attention to the price as well as general explanations of how the two hybrid engines function to make these vehicles fuel efficient. Honda it seems has taken a hint from Toyota over the last year or two and changing the hybrid engine in its new Civic so that it can run on battery alone. Honda’s previous incarnation of the engine only had the electic engine running as added power to the fuel efficient gasoline engine which did nothing for fuel efficiency at lower city speeds.

It won’t be long now until we see a more diverse hybrid market which will start to push pricing down. The more people who can afford this technology, the better it will be for our environment. An oil dependent society like ours needs to find a way to thrust aside that petroleum crutch, and do that fast. Hybrid technology is only the start though. Once we have that sorted out, we are going to have to keep making those forward steps and hopefully see the day when the only oil we see is cooking oil.

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