Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles (and even to Internal Combustion Engines!)
@orhan_atabay, Last update: January 15, 2024
Estimated reading time: 2-3 minutes
Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) have complex powertrain architectures that some customers of the automotive industry have been pursuing for many years.
For some customers, HEVs are products employing impressive technologies that go beyond the state-of-the-art.
HEVs are difficult and laborious to develop, even with a large team of engineers. Some hybrid vehicle powertrain architectures were, and some still are, protected by patents for many years.
Regardless of the type of hybrid powertrain (series, parallel, power-split, etc.), at least one electric motor and one battery are required, in addition to the internal combustion engine and fuel tank. In some HEV sub-categories, the number of electric motors can be more than one. The gearbox in a HEV can be either simpler or more complex than a conventional gearbox. On the software side, many functionalities must be added along with comprehensive algorithms.
What does this mean for the customer?
For most models, the final product, i.e., the vehicle itself, is more complex, more expensive, and heavier than a conventional vehicle.
What does this mean for the automotive industry?
More business branches, more employment, more R&D, and bigger budgets.
Do customers benefit from these hybrid electric vehicles? How about our planet?
In my opinion, they do not.
To prove this point, we should look at some actual numbers. We should conduct a thorough literature review and simulate all vehicle types across countries using life cycle analysis (LCA). Hybrid powertrains would prove to be useful, especially in countries such as the USA, Canada, and Australia, where big internal combustion engines are quite common, as they would reduce engine sizes to some extent.
An important advantage of hybrid vehicle technologies is de-localizing exhaust gas emissions and noise. We can glide silently into and out of our neighbourhoods using the electric part of our powertrain. Similar advantages can also be achieved in marine vessel hybrid powertrain applications, which have been introduced into the market in the last few years.
Many fans of HEV do like the boost and recuperation abilities leading to better acceleration and regaining of some of the brake energy. However, energy recuperation efficiency is very low.
Everyone in the industry can admit that the real innovation that will bring about a change for everyone lies in battery electric vehicles (BEVs) using renewable (or at least low-carbon) energy. What I mean is we must stop burning fossil fuels in our vehicles ASAP.
HEVs are seen as intermediate products to be used while transitioning to BEVs. Did the industry need this exercise for more than 20 years before finally switching to BEVs?
No.
The most successful EV manufacturer company of today, Tesla, has no exercise in building HEVs!
HEVs are designed and sold as a business model!
In terms of greenhouse gas problems, we lost too much time keeping the internal combustion engine (ICE) in our vehicles.
Internal combustion engines are burning the oxygen we breathe.
Even the relatively inefficient fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) could be a better option if the energy used for hydrogen production can be generated using renewable sources, but FCEV has other disadvantages (like low efficiency) which can be the subject of another post.
Saying goodbye to old friends is exceedingly difficult, but the time to say farewell to our old friend “internal combustion engine” has come. It is an old friend, but unfortunately, was not a good friend of ours.