modern day cars [Photo/kenyacarbazaar.com]
Electric cars, while promising, are still the distant future and current hybrids are extremely complex and expensive. But there’s a new mild-hybrid system that improves fuel efficiency by up to 15 percent.
Modern cars come with a lot of conveniences such as entertainment and GPS, electric seats and so on that get their electricity directly from the engine. A mild hybrid running the 48-Volt system uses a secondary battery to take the load of the electrical work off the engine.
It harvests energy from braking, which would otherwise be wasted. The battery can then use that power from regenerative braking to supplement performance in stop-start traffic driving and fill in low torque requirements.
Typically a horsepower gain of 10 to 20 percent is expected and this means the same car can be powered by a much smaller and lighter engine without sacrificing performance. This results in a reduction in emissions by as much as 15 percent while improving fuel efficiency by the same margin.
The best part is that since the system is relatively simple, it provides about 60 percent of the benefit of a hybrid at 20 percent of the cost. The only problem with this system is that it has recently been made available to the market and thus it is quite expensive.
The only car available in Kenya that has it is the Bentley Bentayga, which is retailing at around Sh30 million. By next year the new Mercedes E Class will have the new straight-six engine that comes with a 48 Volt mild hybrid.
Analysts expect 95 percent of all cars sold in 2020 to have a mild hybrid setup. It’s the most sensible step towards sustainable driving and if you have pockets deep enough, you can have it as early as next year.
[photo/kenyacarbazaar.com/modern day cars]