Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Mallett
Better look at Andrew Frankel's report about the experience of Porsche which I posted above. We are of course talking about racing which is not the same as aggressive driving or normal road driving. If you read the science for those types of driving the hybrid does indeed show more "economy".
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I have read the report. The main issue I have with it, in the context of how 'green' the technology is, is that he only compares the hybrid to the NA on the basis of time around a track. What he doesn't mention is how much extra fuel the NA car(s) require to match the hybrid lap time.
Remember, in a NA car, all energy is going one way - from the energy store into kinetic energy. Whenever the car is not applying power to the wheels, there is no energy going anywhere else other than to waste.
So the hybrid in comparison does have greater mass to propel, but also recovers energy that initially came from the energy store to use again. As long as the amount of recovered energy is higher than the amount needed to propel the extra weight, it will be more efficient overall.