ANALYSIS OF FUEL ECONOMY OF CARS WITH HYBRID POWER INSTALLATION

Abstract

The analysis of tendencies of development of modern cars has been carried out, which showed that the most promising solution to energy and environmental problems in transport is the use of hybrid propulsion systems for automobiles that provide (by 30 - 50%) improvement in economic and environmental performance of the car. The analysis of statistical data of hybrid cars research is given, which showed that out of 29 hybrid vehicles, currently available on the US market, only 7 are cheaper to motorists compared to petrol or diesel cars. Also shown are the data of hybrid vehicles for comparison with petrol cars of the same class. Conclusions that buying a car with a hybrid power plant (HPP) is economically preferable to purchasing a similar car with a conventional ICE. However, hybrids are losing their competitive advantage due to the improved efficiency of gasoline-powered vehicles. Therefore, there is need to assess the fuel efficiency of vehicles with hybrid power plants. For evaluation of the fuel efficiency of vehicles with HPP a method is proposed of evaluating their fuel efficiency. To calculate the fuel efficiency of hybrid cars the following data are required: total mileage of the hybrid car, mileage of the hybrid car in electric mode, car mileage in hybrid mode, power consumption of the battery of a hybrid vehicle to overcome 1 km in electric mode, cost of 1 kW of stored energy in traction battery from a standard mains, fuel consumption in hybrid mode, cost of fuel. It is shown that, the less the daily mileage of a hybrid car and lower the average speed, the cheaper is the km of its run. Unlike vehicles with ICE, in which high consumption of fuel occurs on the first kilometers at low average speeds, which is associated with intensive heating up of the ICE when its temperature reaches the nominal value and with the fact that the car in traffic jams has a low average speed (up to 30 km/h), and the ICE works inefficiently.