Hi, I’m Eve. This article comes from Oil Price, so you can expect me to be anti-electric. But there’s an implicit assumption among many policymakers that drivers will choose or be forced to use only electric vehicles. But Toyota, which is lagging behind in the electric vehicle race, isn’t committed to all-electric vehicles because it believes the market for electric vehicles is much smaller than proponents think. Inside the EV In January:
Toyota’s former CEO and current Chairman, Akio Toyoda, has long advocated for a mixed-fuel future, including hybrids, gasoline engines and eventually hydrogen. Now, he says he believes EVs will soon start to hit unofficial market share caps around the world.
According to Toyoda, that magic number is 30%. He claims that EVs will be limited, unofficially of course, to around 30% of total new car sales. The rest of the market will be filled by hybrids, hydrogen fuel cells and traditional internal combustion engines…
It’s not clear where Toyoda got this figure from, or if he has a specific date in mind for the cap…
Last year, EVs accounted for about 18% of new vehicle sales globally, a number that is expected to continue to grow. BloombergNEF, for example, predicts that EVs will account for 44% of new vehicle sales by 2030 and 75% by 2040. Of course, these numbers will vary by country, as some countries will likely fall behind in their existing infrastructure needs.
As an automaker, Toyota has always been fairly conservative in its EV rollout. While the brand has been a strong advocate of hydrogen, it sees the success of FCEVs as a distant future. Now, the company acknowledges that EVs are needed to bridge the gap between hybrids and FCEVs, but Toyoda says EVs will never fully meet the world’s needs. This is the reason for the company’s “multi-pronged approach” to the future.
Toyoda says one of the biggest problems preventing the widespread adoption of EVs is infrastructure. With more than 750 million people worldwide lacking access to electricity, there will certainly be a market for internal combustion engines to continue to exist. But just because someone has access to electricity doesn’t mean it’s reliable, or that the power grid can withstand an influx of EVs in the short term without improvements. And Toyoda believes there’s still room for hybrids, fuel cell EVs, and traditional internal combustion engine vehicles.
That being said, this article on EV deterrents seems to go too far with the purchase price of an EV. Most readers will know that China has very competitive products that are not available in the West. They also point out that charging times are long. Some readers will be countering China’s battery swapping stations. I remember this being considered as an option when the first serious EV development began in the US (I drove an EV prototype in 1993, it was very underpowered). The reason swapping was rejected was because swapping stations would obviously require more land than a gas station, and therefore would be too difficult and expensive to set up.
Article by Irina Slav, a writer for Oilprice.com who has been writing about the oil and gas industry for over 10 years. Oil prices
- Renault, China’s Geely Automobile and Saudi Aramco are investing in new internal combustion engine technology.
- Renault and Geely are choosing a different way to achieve that, through fuel efficiency and other technological advances in the internal combustion engine.
- Affordability is one of the factors that keeps drivers sticking with ICE technology.
Nearly every prediction about the future of transportation centers around the idea of electric vehicles taking over the roads, replacing internal combustion engines and making them a thing of the past.
But not everyone agrees. Renault, China’s Geely Automobile and, since last month, Saudi Aramco have all joined the fray, investing in companies developing powertrain technology for internal combustion engines. The future may not be as electrified as hoped.
Horse Powertrain was established in late May as a 50:50 joint venture between Renault and Geely. Said The company said it aims to be a leader in “ultra-low emission internal combustion engine and highly economical hybrid technology.”
So decarbonization remains a top priority, but Renault and Geely are opting for a different approach: improving fuel economy and other advances in the internal combustion engine rather than full electrification.
Aramco’s involvement is no surprise, especially given the recent success of its EV darling, Lucid Motors. saw The company’s stock price has plummeted from more than $50 a vehicle to less than $9 in three years, and it failed to meet its delivery targets for the first half of this year despite boasting a record delivery of 2,394 vehicles.
The Saudi oil giants like to spread their investments across multiple sectors, and the ICE sector still seems pretty popular. People still buy much more internal combustion cars than electric cars. Many EV drivers would like to go back to internal combustion cars. The situation with electrification of transport is not good, and the usual glitches of new technology are still being worked out. However, teeth It seems to be as sturdy as ever for an internal combustion engine.
“It would be incredibly expensive for the world to completely eradicate or eliminate the internal combustion engine,” said Yaser Mufti, Saudi Aramco’s vice president for the Horse Powertrain deal. Said “Affordability and many other factors mean that housing is likely to be around for a very long time to come,” the Financial Times said.
Affordability is certainly one of the factors that keeps drivers sticking with ICE technology: despite all the efforts being made by EV manufacturers to bring down the price of electric vehicles and governments supporting the technology, EVs are still more expensive than comparable internal combustion engine vehicles.
Of course, affordability is only one part of the car equation; the other is refueling or charging time, which is another area where ICE cars have an advantage over EVs. While there is much talk about the convenience of being able to charge an EV overnight in your garage, EV bulls are realizing that globally, only a minority of drivers have a garage where they can charge their EV, and most will have to rely on public chargers. Also, only a minority of drivers are willing to spend hours charging their car, whether overnight or not.
Perhaps the best evidence of the enduring power of the internal combustion engine is China’s latest auto sales numbers. The world’s largest market continues to break records for EV sales. This has likely led to the perception that half of China’s cars are electric. However, the reality is quite different.
Xinhua News Agency report Earlier this week, it was announced that the total number of cars on China’s roads reached 440 million as of the end of June. Of these, data showed that new energy vehicles accounted for 24.72 million. Of these, 18.13 million were plug-in electric vehicles, or EVs, and the rest were hybrids. That means that, in percentage terms, EVs make up just 4.1% of the Chinese market. In other words, even in the world’s largest EV market, where billions of dollars are being spent on charging infrastructure, making EVs very cheap, most drivers still prefer internal combustion engine vehicles.
“We believe we will see a significant number of ICE vehicles in 2035, 2040 and beyond,” Horse Powertrain CEO Matthias Giannini told the Financial Times. “More than half the population, up to 60%, will still have some kind of engine, whether that be pure ICE, full hybrid or plug-in hybrid.”
The only reason the internal combustion engine has survived so long and remains the dominant transportation technology is because it is superior to the alternatives and its benefits have consistently outweighed its costs. The EV revolution stumbled and failed at the cost-benefit analysis stage, when no one seems to have done it. So the market favored the EV revolution, and the EV surge that was so much celebrated last year slowed before the year was out. Horse Powertrain may yet get some new shareholders.
