Page - 24 - in Our Car as Power Plant

24 Therefore hybrid cars are introduced: an electric motor combined with a combustion engine that produces elec- tricity from a fuel. These hybrid cars have a normal com- bustion engine of about 100 kW and an electric motor of about 60 to 100 kW. The weight of these cars is 1,500 kg. Although our car now has two engines and is therefore heavier, the fuel economy is even slightly better than for the small family car: about 4 to 5 liter per 100 km. But can we do better and solve also the two main dis- advantages of electric driving? Yes we can! In the future it will become possible to drive automatically. We’ll be able to can read the newspaper while driving. It will certainly lead to a better energy efficiency: driving at a very constant speed, with less distance between cars, which will reduce resistance losses. But there is more to come. Electric motors can be mounted in the wheels, thereby eliminating the losses in the gearbox transmission. We can build our cars from (bio-)plastic with the same comfort and safety standards, which will reduce the weight of cars considerably. And in the future we will replace the combustion engine by a fuel cell that can produce elec- tricity with a much higher efficiency and will allow very long driving distances and short fuelling times.