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Where do you think the energy comes from in this case, or do they use magical everlasting permanent magnetsOriginally Posted by Huhness
As one of my engineering lecturers likes to say, there are three types of perpetual motion machines, all equally useful- They break the first law of thermodynamics, they break the second law or they produce no work. If you don't understand either of the laws there should be plenty of googlable stuff on them. If you're interested in perpetual energy machines also check out http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm
As for hybrids the economics behind the government's decision are questionable, but they no doubt want to be seen to be doing something. This will be the only form of "green" transport viable in the short term (hell even Walmart have gotten into it). All the technologies being talked about at the moment have the potential to be the dominant technology, however I think we're going to see some form of electric transport dominating in the future- whether it's with batteries or supercapacitors or hydrogen.
Hybrids are a good short-term solution, and will allow development of electric / other technologies whilst still having an older more reliable technology behind it. I'm quite disappointed that hybrids currently on the market do not come as plug-ins. By now we should have plug-in hybrids on the market that can go 100 or so km just on electric, enough for the day to day use of most people. Then all we need to do is build up the electricity grid with renewables and voila! problem solved
Of course any option is expensive... But as fossils become rarer etc. the other options will begin to look better
