Alternative Vehicles
Automakers have long pondered are placement for the combustion engine, which guzzles the limited resource of oil and clogs the atmosphere with noxious waste. Some have experimented with cars powered by hydrogen and solar panels, propulsion systems hat may be practical someday but are out of reach for now. While others tinkered, Toyota boldly invested dozen years ago in an intermediary step, a practical hybrid that would not eliminate the combustion engine but would reduce its role in powering the car and rely as much as possible on an electric battery.
At the end of he 1990s Toyota introduced the first of its Prius hybrids, but to be very little acclaim. The car was small, expensive, and underpowered- which made it easy for the public and most competitors to ignore. (An exception was Honda, which was also developing a hybrid engine) Only a few thousand environmentalists took note when the Prius was first introduced in the U.S in 2000.
But Toyota was not discouraged. By 2003 it had defined the Prius into an attractive, roomy, and fully-powered car. The combustion engine powers the car in demanding situations, such as going uphill. Going downhill or breaking the kinetic energy produced is stored in the electric battery, which takes over when the car is moving in city traffic or idling. That enables the car to get 60 or so miles to a gallon of gas. For the driver, operating a Prius is the same as for any car; he keeps his foot on the accelerator, and a computer under the hood smoothly toggles back and forth between battery and engine.