Why do hybrid and electric cars account for less than 3 percent of the 89 million cars sold every year across the world? It’s mainly because hybrids are expensive and 100% electric cars can’t go far between battery charges.
While others scramble to design smaller, lighter combustion engines, or better fuel-cell and battery technologies, an Israeli startup is totally reinventing the combustion engine to power the hybrid car of the future – a smart electric vehicle.
Chief Marketing Officer and cofounder Gal Fridman tells ISRAEL21c that after just two years in business, Aquarius Engines has filed three patents and signed a deal to test the Aquarius engine in a major European automaker’s concept car at the beginning of 2017.
Because Aquarius uses so little fuel to power the engine and charge the battery, drivers would have to fill the 50-liter (13-gallon) tank only about every five or six weeks.
Whereas conventional automobiles can go 600 kilometers (372 miles) on 50 liters of gasoline, and an electric car can go 350 kilometers on a single charge, a car fitted with the Aquarius engine has a range of 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) per tank.