According to SFGate, 100 Northern California households will be given the use of experimental, plug-in hybrid cars next year for consumer testing. These Prius’ easily get up to 100 MPG gallon on their combined power from electric motors and gasoline engines and release even fewer environment-harming emissions than your conventional hybrid model.

The article continues…

Plug-in hybrids are in their infancy - perhaps 50 of them are in fleets maintained by utility companies, universities and other organizations - and so far there has been no large testing of how they work in everyday use. Normal hybrids use a combination of electric and gasoline power to eke out better mileage than gasoline-only cars, largely by having the electric motor take over in situations where the car does not require much power, such as crawling down a city street or in a freeway traffic jam. The electric power is created by on-board generators and regenerative braking, freeing the car from the leash of a power cord and hours of recharging that purely electric cars required.

Read the entire piece here.

Via Gizmodo.