CAJ conclusion:


I have to say that I started my CAJ with a very optimistic view towards HEVs and EVs even though I didn't like them. There a many benefits for the average hybrid or electric car driver, such as lower "fuel" cost, less pollution and a very pushed ego because of his "green" attitude. I knew that EVs and HEVs had certain drawbacks, such as a relatively short range, a limited choice of cars, high prices, cheap looking interior/exterior and bad performance compared to cars fitted with internal combustion engines (although there are some good ones). But through my research I discovered the ethical problem behind EVs or plug-in HEVs charged by electricity generated in nuclear power plants. I further decided to do some math and proved that it would be almost impossible to produce enough electricity to supply an EV per citizen. I looked into the production of EVs/HEVs and read articles that explained why these cars were anything but "green". Lithium from China and Nickel (for example) from Canada have to be transported around the globe to build the necessary batteries. I never was a fan of HEVs and HEVs but I always thought it was the way to go. But as I finished my research project, I was convinced that we had just begun to walk a very difficult and long road.

PS. I still hate the Prius.

Are HEV's and EV's really using renewable energy? And is it possible to have a whole country with nothing but electric cars?

Well, this question is quite easy to answer: It depends on your location. Your car may be running largely on electricity and there won't be as many emissions coming directly from the exhausst of your car, but that doesn't mean that there are none. If you live in a region where most of your eletricity is produced by coal or nuclear power plants then your HEV or electric car might pollute the environment even more than a car fitted with a internal combustion engine would.

Therefore, people in heavily indutrialized regions with little or no solar, wind or water power plants should avoid using regular "plug-in" HEV's or electric cars, if they really want to drive "green".
Right now, most countries try to shift their electricity production from coal/oil/nuclear power to solar/wind/water etc. In theory this is a great idea, but its relisation will that decades and all nations will have conserve energy to shorten the time. If our demand for electricity rises as fast as new electricity can be produced by using renewable energy sources, we won't be able to close down any plant at all. If you think about the enormous amount of energy needed for personal and public transport you will realise that there is a giant flaw in "buying many HEV's and eletric cars to become green". Our demand for energy, especially electricity for homes (heating, cooling etc.) is rising, even without counting the car industry. Normally, the government would build a more "green" plants and a few storage power stations to deal with the demand. However, the increasing number of electric cars might soon be seen as a problem for this system.
An example:
Let's think about the United States of America. A huge country with more than 300 million people. What would happen if you were to give each one of them an electric car with unlimited range?
A normal electric car needs around 30 kWh per 100 miles. The average American drives 15000 mile per year. That means, each American would use 4500 kWh just for transportation. Multiply this by the number of US-citizens and you will end with a demand for 1350 billion kWh per year. As a comparison, an average US-power plant generates 11,8 kWh billion per year. That would amount to 115 new nuclear power plants. If you are not a fan of nuclear power, let me translate this for you: The hydropower plant at Hoover Dam is one of the country's largest hydroelectric installations and it produces a "mere" 4 billion kWh per year. To satisfy the demand for eletricity, the government would have to build more than 300 installations the size of Hoover Dam.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=104&t=3
http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/faqs/powerfaq.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_national_average_of_miles_each_American_driver_drives_per_year?#slide=2
http://activeemobility.blogspot.co.at/2012/05/how-much-electric-does-ev-use.html

Update on some of the most common types of hybrid arrangements in personal cars

 Update on some of the most common types of hybrid arrangements in personal cars

I know the following paragraphs are based on information from wikipedia, but I read through quite a few scientific papers and couldn't find one that anybody woud understand. Still, I tried to convert the scientific "language" into something anyone could "decipher". To be honest, I couldn't do it as good as wikipedia. I thought that giving a worse explanation than the one given on the first side that google would come up with is unacceptable. Therefore, my explanation is based on the research I did using scientific papers as a source for rewriting the stuff I found on wikipedia.

Parallel hybrid

In a parallel hybrid vehicle, the single electric motor and the internal combustion engine are installed so that they can power the vehicle either individually or together. In contrast to the power split configuration typically only one electric motor is installed.
Modern versions have a second electric motor/generatorconnected to the wheels for a faster transmission.

Mild parallel hybrid

These types use a generally compact electric motor

to provide auto-stop/start features and to provide extra power assist during the acceleration, and to generate on the deceleration phase. Just a hybrid in name: sporty cars , to be sold as „hybrids“

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV)

Another subtype of hybrid vehicles is the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV). It is basically a Hybrid with increased energy storage capacity. Which enables people to drive in an „all-electric mode“ before switching to the internal combustion engine when the battery runs low. 

Sources: (especially the last one gave me a lot of different 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378775303009753

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=855188&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D855188

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6902

My CAJ-Talk hybrid/electric car

My CAJ Talk

I decided to inform my brother, Christian, about my CAJ, concerning hybrid and electric cars. At first, I thought that it would be a bad idea to talk to him, because everyone around my age has some knowledge of hybrid and electric cars. But my brother turned out to be a complete stranger to the topic. I mean he knew that they existed, but that was it. So, I decided to start our conversation by explaining the functioning of a hybrid and an electric engine. 

I then continued to talk about some well-known hybrid car models and about the sale statistics in the US. My brother wanted to know why I had none from the EU, especially from Austria. This led me to another part of my CAJ, the fuel consumption. I described the current car-related situation in Northern America and why many US citizens decided to buy a green car. Then Christian asked me why there were only so few hybrid cars in Europe. To answer this, I had to explain the conventional combustion engine, the diesel engine and why one of them used less fuel than the other. 
Although, I understood it myself, it was a completely different thing, to explain it to someone who was never interested in engines. I decided to change the topic of our discussion to the ethical aspect of hybrid and electric cars. As I explained the reasons why someone would buy a green car, despite its obvious drawbacks, I was sure my brother would not believe me. 

As it turned out, I was wrong. As a student of psychology, he very well understood that people wanted to be considered “environmentally aware” by their peers. Then, it was me who wanted to know more about it, because I considered buying a hybrid complete madness. But my brother had no interest in continuing our conversation and so he just mentioned some psychological theories, none of which I knew or could remember and left.

CAJ- Abstract

This CAJ tries to compare hybrid and electric cars to their fossil fueled counterparts. Its aim is to inform about the current technology behind these "green" cars. Furthermore, it intends to find out, if hybrid and electric cars are acceptable replacements for conventional cars when it comes to personal transport.  I gathered information, by reading different academic papers, both in favor of and against those new types of cars, in order to write a series of blogposts, each dedicated to a different aspect of my research. So far, my work led to one conclusion: As it is today, the hybrid technology offers no significant advantages over a modern internal combustion engine (diesel or petrol powered) and suffers from a lot of drawbacks, such as a higher price. The only explanation for the success of hybrid cars, especially in the United States of America, is the ideal they stand for, the environmental consciousness. The electric car, however, will, thanks to continuous development, eventually surpass the capabilities of a conventional car. Even if they are still too expensive to produce and their batteries are too weak. As a result,  the electric car will be capable of replacing the fossil fueled car as our primary mean of personal transport.