Robert Q. Riley Enterprises: Product Design & Development
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Production Hybrids

Hybrid-Electric Vehicles
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Honda’s Insight uses a 1.0 liter, 3-cylinder (58hp) gasoline engine to run the car. But the engine is underrated for the car, and it wouldn’t have enough power for hill-climbing and acceleration if that’s all that powered it. So Honda simply stuck a pancake motor on the flywheel that kicks in for acceleration. High fuel economy comes mainly from using an underrated engine and relying on the motor for peak power demands.

When a 150 hp engine is just cruising along at, say, 10 hp, which is all you need to maintain cruising speed, fuel consumption per unit of output can double or triple. A gasoline engine operates most efficiently at about 75 - 80 percent load. That’s the region in which it delivers the most output per unit of fuel consumed.

 

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