AS I struggled to drive a hired SUV up a particularly steep dirt track, my passenger offered some sage advice: “Turn the aircon off.” I did – and the car practically took off, showing just how much power it takes to run a car’s air conditioner.
And if aircon is a strain even for a standard car, it’s a challenge to the very raison d’être of petrol-electric hybrids, says Tom Robinson of Ricardo, an automotive engineering firm in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, UK.
The problem is that when a hybrid is set to “economy” mode – in which the combustion engine…
