Honda Civic Hybrid - a feel-good car

Hybrids seem to be having the same impact the Volkswagen Beetle had on our society back in the ’60s and ’70s. Hybrids are seen as anti-establishment symbols, the anti-status status symbol. But there has been some discontent with these feel-good cars as owners have found they’re not getting the advertised mileage. So if you’re on the verge of being overcome by the environmentally correct need to get behind the wheel of a hybrid, be advised that they don’t all work in the same way. You’ll need to curb some of your speedy habits and learn some new driving skills to achieve their fuel-economy claims.

In a hybrid, the trick is to drive like a grandmother. You have to accelerate away from a stop slowly enough to minimize the role of the gasoline engine and maximize the role of the electric motor. Very simply, hybrids use an electric motor as a supporting source of power that doesn’t require gasoline, and that’s the whole point. Indeed, a Toyota Prius can pull away from a stop using only its electric motor, although the Civic hybrid shown here cannot.

There are two major reasons why the Civic can’t do that. First, it has a weakling 20-hp electric motor, whereas the Prius’s makes a robust 67 horses, so it’s better able to move almost 3000 pounds off a dime. Second, the Honda’s engine and electric motor are sandwiched together and then connected to the transmission, so if one is running, so is the other. The Prius’s electric motor and gas engine, on the other hand, are hooked up at separate points to the transmission, and therefore, one power source can be driven while the other is shut off. The Toyota system makes electric-only driving easy and is the primary advantage of that configuration. Honda’s hybrid system is more simple and compact and is more easily adaptable than the Toyota system to different vehicles.

Interestingly, although the Civic can’t move away from a stop using only the electric motor, Honda says there is one situation where its hybrid can run on just electricity—at about 15 to 20 mph when cruising on a flat surface at a steady speed with a fully charged, or nearly so, battery pack. Since the electric motor and the gas engine rotate inseparably, the Civic must cut off fuel to the engine and use its variable-valve-timing system to close the engine’s valves and make it easier for the electric motor to do its job. The Civic’s only giveaway that it’s running on electricity alone is the digital bar graph that lights up suddenly when juice is being sent to the motor. So it might not have the beans to get the Civic going from a stop, but the 20-hp electric motor does have enough gusto to keep the car moving at low speeds—all by itself, if only briefly. However, it’s such a short span of time under such specific and not-often-encountered conditions that the fuel savings are likely minuscule. Honda probably makes the claim to equal those of its major rival hybrid, the Prius.

The second big trick that hybrids can do is recharge their own batteries. The recharging occurs when you lift off the throttle, when you hit the brakes, or when cruising if the computer determines that the battery needs charging. When you get off the gas in a hybrid, the primary source of deceleration is the electric motor, not the gas engine as in a conventional car. Moreover, the hybrid uses a special electric motor that can also operate as a generator. Send this electric motor electricity, and it will produce power; rotate it using external forces, and it will produce electricity. Using the car’s momentum to spin this motor, therefore, creates electricity, which is sent back to the battery pack. That’s called regenerative braking. Hitting the brakes lightly will cause the electric motor to resist motion further, and in doing so, even more electricity is produced to send to the batteries.

A “zero-emission” sports car launched at the Geneva Motor Show.

The hydrogen-powered Lifecar, based on the design of the Morgan Aero-8 roadster, produces little noise and only water vapour from its exhaust.

The lightweight model packs advanced fuel cells and an energy storage system that gives the car a range of 250 miles (400km) per tank of hydrogen.

It has been developed by a consortium of UK companies and universities.

“Figures suggest the car should be capable of doing 0-60 [miles per hour] in about seven seconds,” Matthew Parkin of classic sports car manufacturer Morgan told BBC News.

However, the exact acceleration will not be known until the complete car is taken for its first test drive.

“It’s nearly there and the plan is to drive it when the show is over,” said Mr Parkin.

Clever power

The £1.9m project to build the Lifecar, part funded by the UK government, has taken nearly three years. “The basic concept was to build an entertaining and fun sports car that would act as a showcase for the technology and would deliver 150 miles to the gallon,” said Mr Parkin.

“Everything else has tumbled out from that.”

The car is powered by a bank of lightweight hydrogen fuel-cells developed by UK defence firm Qinetiq.

“If you took a typical internal combustion engine and replaced it with a fuel cell, the fuel cell would be very large,” explained Ian Whiting of Qinetiq. “That’s not an efficient way to do things.”

The fuel cells in the Lifecar produce about 22 kilowatts - roughly one fifth of the amount of power of a typical combustion engine.

“With that we can provide all of the cruise capability we need to,” he said.

When the car needs to accelerate or climb a hill it draws extra power from a bank of ultra-capacitors aligned down the centre of the car. “They are like a battery but they do not store quite as much energy and they allow the energy in and out much quicker,” explained Mr Whiting.

These are primarily charged by a regenerative braking system which slows the car by converting the vehicle’s kinetic energy into useful electrical energy using a motor.

“Hybrid cars already use regenerative braking - normally it restores about 10% of the energy,” said Mr Parkin. “Lifecar is aiming for 50%.”