Forget plug-ins and the Prius. It’s a mirco-hybrid world by 2017
VW taking microhybrid leadership to full hybrids soon
39 million micro-hybrids in the next five years
New analysis by Lux Research suggests hybrid vehicles have a much bigger interim future than most might expect, especially here in America. Unfortunately, that future is driven by micro-hybrids, but at least that’s still a bit of an improvement.
Thus, by 2017 micro-hybrids will achieve 42 percent market share in the light duty vehicle space. Mild hybrid cars are are also expected to make a jump forward.
One of the more interesting points of the study is that a huge micro-hybrid market already exists. Only we don’t know about it here in America because the micro-hybrid is driven by Europe, especially by VW. Europe will continue to dominate the micro-hybrid in 2017, but China and America are also expected to make big jumps in adoption.
Similarly, according to Lux, as battery makers begin building out supply chains and manufacturing capabilities for plug-ins, mild hybrids stand to experience great growth as well as they suck up spare capacity in the lithium-ion supply chains. Market share, however, is still projected to be less than 2 percent by 2017.
That makes me wonder about full hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius or the new lithium hybrids coming from Ford. Why couldn’t these vehicles take advantage of the development of lithium supplies as well?
By 2017 Toyota, for instance, could be well beyond 1 million hybrid sales per year according to previous company forecasts, and if lithium costs are conducive, Toyota has indicated it would make the switch to lithium batteries. Likewise, Ford could easily be producing a few hundred thousand hybrids per year as well if the plug-in build out provides cheaper lithium batteries for all.
The Lux study apparently did not assess full hybrid potential under this same scenario.
Anyway, a little disappointing how real world, cost-effective solutions for increasing fuel economy, such as microhybrids, turbo-charging, etc. are driven by the European market and not the US, but I’ll be getting back to that later.
Source: GreenCarCongress
you gotta stop sending up these trial balloons Detroit….or we’re gonna just give up on this plug-in stuff altogether. We bailed you out with our grand-kid’s money, now get on it……
Sorry VW mate, too little too late.
For years, you’ve been arguing against Hybrids and now you come up with an outdated, inferior, cut down version. I wouldn’t even think of buying a VW Hybrid with the track record of reliability VW have, add more complexity and its gonna break down at every street corner. Did you not realise that all this time, the leading hybrid makers were focussed on getting the principles right – mainitaining reliability with the increase in complexity to drivetrain.
[...] Forget plug-ins and the Prius. Its a mirco-hybrid world by 2017 var addthis_product = 'wpp-262'; var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":false,"data_track_addressbar":false};if (typeof(addthis_share) == "undefined"){ addthis_share = [];}39 million micro-hybrids in the next five years New analysis by Lux Research suggests hybrid vehicles have a much bigger interim future than most might expect, especially here in America. Unfortunately, that future is driven by micro-hybrids, but at least thats still a bit of an improvement. Thus, by 2017 micro-hybrids will achieve 42 percent market share … Read more: http://www.hybridcarblog.com/ [...]
I’m sorry. Too many hybrid categories to keep them straight.
What is a Micro-hybrid?