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Because of the limitations of their storage batteries, electric cars have always suffered from short range, high weight, and high cost. New battery technologies will provide a significant improvement but all-electric vehicles will still tend to be heavy, costly, and severely limited in range compared with their combustion-engined counterparts. Despite these inherent disadvantages, there is a huge impetus for electric car development because of the pollution disadvantages of the combustion engine. Given the weight/cost/range problems of purely electric cars, it is desirable to develop hybrid cars which have the capability of operating as zero-emission electric cars in urban areas and which use a small internal combustion engine to extend the operating range. The internal combustion engine and its fuel are far lighter, cheaper, and more effective at extending range than carrying enough battery capacity to give an all-electric vehicle a suitable range. The U.S.