US federal agency to investigate Honda Accord Hybrid

From the New York Times: A little more than five years after a crash killed Lalitha Seetharaman’s husband, Gautam, she is hoping the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will be able to confirm her contention that her Honda Accord Hybrid’s brakes were responsible for his death.

To obtain that information, she is employing a little-used and little-known federal regulation that requires the safety agency to consider carrying out a defect investigation.

Ms. Seetharaman, 31, of Newton, Pa., was driving the Accord Hybrid at the time of the accident, in which she was badly injured. She was initially charged with careless operation, but the charge was later dismissed for “not meeting the burden of proof,” according to officials from the New Jersey State Police and local court.

Lalitha Seetharaman hopes to learn whether the brakes on her Honda Accord Hybrid contributed to the crash in which her husband, Gautam, was killed.Now, N.H.T.S.A. is considering whether to grant her defect petition, which would ask the safety agency to investigate Ms. Seetharaman’s claim: that a loss of stopping power occurs when the Accord Hybrid’s brakes are applied on a rough or uneven surface. Read more...

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Russian magnate starts hybrid car company

From the New York Times / NDTV: Mikhail D. Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire who owns the New Jersey Nets basketball team, rolled out another pet project on Monday: Russia’s first gas-electric hybrid car. It is called the Yo, for the Russian letter “ë,” and it can use either gasoline or natural gas to generate its electric power. Proponents say the Yo makes use of Russian engineering innovations but can be priced for mass consumption because of its bare-bones approach to hybrid automotive technology.

While two electric motors propel the Yo, a small petroleum engine that can burn either gasoline or natural gas will run nearly continuously to generate the electricity they consume. Instead of charging a battery, as in the hybrid Toyota Prius, the generator in the Yo either powers the motors directly or fills a bank of capacitors that can hold only a small charge.

The designers say that at about 67 miles per gallon, the Yo will achieve better fuel economy than the Toyota Prius (about 51 miles per gallon), in part because it is lighter. Like other gas-electric hybrids, it will also have a total range far beyond that of a pure plug-in electric car like the newly introduced Nissan Leaf.

The Yo, which is expected to go on sale in Russia in mid-2012 and cost about $14,500, will have a top speed of 80 miles per hour and a range of 680 miles — if both its natural gas and gasoline tanks are filled.

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