Honda has unveiled their new heat-harnessing hybrid drive, which, as you may have guessed, is 3.8% more efficient due to the harnessing of heat through a Rankine cycle engine. Exhaust from the car is used to heat water internally, creating steam. The steam is then used to the power an electric generator, which powers the car at low speeds in addition to charging the car battery.

However, Honda has decided to push for more efficiency before using the system in production vehicles. This doesn’t really represent a major advancement in car technology, as the actual system has been around for a while and certainly wasn’t invented by Honda. It is, rather, a major step in the right direction. If all cars used highly efficient engines based around a similar cycle, we’d be spending significantly less money on fuel.

Keep up the good work Honda! It’s great to see a major company making advancements in this area and driving the efficiency standard upwards.

Coming from Australia’s CSIRO, “The UltraBattery is a hybrid energy storage device that integrates a supercapacitor with a lead acid battery in one unit cell.” Translation: a battery which is cheaper, lasts longer, and provides more power. The battery is aimed at use in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).

So exactly how much better is this thing, you ask? Here are the tech specs:
4x longer cycle life
50 percent more power than lead acid counterparts
about 70 percent less expensive than current HEV battery systems
faster charge and discharge rates

The battery has performed well in recent testing in an HEV which surpassed 100,000 miles. Hopefully these are released commercially soon. The world could use some more plug-in hybrids, and these batteries are sure to make plug-ins sell.