At the beginning of the birth of the car, it was through burning coal to heat water to produce steam, and the steam engine to drive the car forward. By 1885, the world's first practical car was born. It burned gasoline to drive the engine. For more than 100 years since then, cars are different from early cars in style, structure and performance. However, the only thing that hasn't changed is that most cars still "drink" gasoline (or diesel).
The rapid development of automobile industry has greatly facilitated people's transportation and transportation, but it is also rapidly consuming a large amount of fossil energy. It is estimated that in China alone, the number of cars will reach nearly 200 million in less than 10 years. So many cars will "drink" about 200 million tons of gasoline a year. If converted into oil, it is equivalent to the country's total oil production and import in a year! While the car consumes fuel, it will also emit a large amount of exhaust gas, resulting in more and more serious air pollution problems.
Energy consumption and environmental pollution make the development and use of cars face great pressure. The way out may lie in the development of new energy and new energy vehicles. The so-called new energy generally refers to various new energy modes other than traditional fossil energy, including solar energy, wind energy, nuclear energy, etc; For vehicles using new energy as fuel, it mainly refers to using other energy sources other than gasoline and diesel as power, such as pure electric vehicle (Bev), fuel cell vehicle (FCEV), hydrogen engine vehicle, other new energy vehicles, etc.
Among them, pure electric vehicles mostly use new batteries (such as lithium-ion batteries) as energy, and solar electric vehicles also belong to this kind, because solar cars drive vehicles by converting solar energy into electric energy; Fuel cell vehicles mainly use hydrogen and methanol to generate current through chemical reaction rather than combustion, and then drive it by motor; Hydrogen engine vehicles directly use hydrogen as efficient fuel to drive the engine; In addition, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, methanol and ethanol (alcohol) have also become possible energy sources to replace gasoline, and various attempts have been made as automobile fuel.
The "new" of new energy vehicles is not only that these types of energy are different from the previous "new energy", but also because most of them are "friendly" to the environment, reaching zero or low emission of exhaust gas, making the air cleaner and "new". Although most of these cars still maintain the appearance of traditional cars (except solar cars), their internal structure, especially the structure of energy generation devices and power systems, has undergone fundamental changes, which can be said to be brand-new.
In fact, in the development and research of new energy vehicles, it is a large class of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) that has made more substantive progress and promotion. Such vehicles still use some traditional fuels (gasoline or diesel), but they are equipped with batteries and motors, or use another kind of cleaner energy (such as ethanol, etc.) at the same time. In this way, the two energy sources can be used alternately according to the actual needs to make up for each other. On the one hand, the power of the vehicle is improved, on the other hand, the consumption of traditional energy is reduced, and the exhaust emission is significantly improved. In this sense, it is also appropriate for such low consumption and low emission vehicles to be classified as "new energy vehicles".