Cars

This is a guest post from Jeremy Silverstein, Vice President of Operations and Vehicle Dispatching at Goodwill Car Donations. During the five years he’s been with the organization, Jeremy has become quite an expert in the field and has handled tens of thousands of donated vehicles. So we’re excited to have the opportunity to talk with him about donating your car as a charitable gift for your taxes and the planet too…

New technology is prone to being a source of confusion simply because few people know all the facts, understand the technology, and get caught up in exaggerated stories generated by peoples’ natural impulsive tendency to allow fantasies to fill in the blanks. Following are four common myths surrounding hybrid cars. We’ll see which ones are fact, and which ones are fiction…

All hybrid cars share at least three common factors. In fact, all three capabilities must be present in order for the vehicle to be classified as hybrid. These three steps include: Regenerative braking, idle-off capability and power assist. These steps are explained below in more detail. Read on to learn more about what makes a car a hybrid

There are three primary types of hybrid vehicles we are going to compare: the parallel hybrid, the mild hybrid and the plug-in hybrid. Then we provide an overview of the car models on the market…

The term hybrid is one of the hottest buzz words to enter the English lexicon. In our global economy and an ever-growing awareness of the limitations of our resources, people everywhere are concerned about how we can maintain our lifestyles into the future. There is a plethora of curiosity, enthusiasm and confusion surrounding this term as we face high gas prices and a bleak forecast for our natural environment. Our lifestyles are being threatened, and so people all over the world look to the hybrid car as a potential solution, allowing us to continue speeding across our lands and living our lives of convenience. With all these concerns riding on the success of new technology, it is no wonder that people want to know, in simple terms, how do hybrid cars work…

On a recent visit to San Francisco I was amazed at the number of Toyota Priuses on the road. I don’t think at any one time I could look in any direction on the highway or on city streets and not see one. It’s no wonder that the American auto market has been eclipsed by foreign auto makers, not the least of which is Toyota, riding the success wave of their gas-electric hybrid, the Prius.

When it comes to hybrid cars, one of the most important, if not the most important metric, are the mpg’s (miles per gallon). So how many miles per gallon does your Prius hybrid get? When I accompanied my fiance to buy one last year, we were greeted with an EPA mpg on the sticker touting a city mpg of 60, and a highway mpg of 50.

Hybrid cars use a combination of fuel and stored electrical power (in a battery) to optimize fuel consumption and help reduce emissions. They can be seen as a stepping stone between fuel-based cars and electric automobiles. What many consumers, as well as owners of hybrid automobiles don’t realize, is that it’s possible to purchase a kit that will turn your hybrid into a plug-in hybrid automobile. In other words, into an electric vehicle. The problem with these kits is that they currently are only available on the black market, and as such they will invalidate your warranty if you install them. They are also better suited to certain hybrid automobile models than to others…