Hybrid
vehicles versus electric vehicles: Just posturing?
Thursday,
October 25, 2007
Is
the Volt heading in the wrong direction?
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature
on the debate going on at the Tokyo Auto Show between
automakers regarding hybrid
vehicles versus electric vehicles.
When I read the piece, I could only laugh.
Big surprise that Toyota would defend hybrid vehicles. Can
you say Prius?
Likewise GM's
Chevy Volt plug-in - a series plug-in hybrid, even
though GM hates the word hybrid - puts GM on the same side
as Toyota.
Well, kind of.
On the other side is Honda and Nissan. Nissan essentially
rents their hybrid technology from Toyota, and Honda has
been VERY bearish on hybrids since the Insight. Recently,
it was even admitted that today most Civic hybrids are
basically hand built - Honda has yet to create a full
production line for the Civic
hybrid.
Instead, Honda and Nissan claim pure electric cars are the
best way forward.
"My feeling is that the kind of plug-in hybrid
currently proposed by different auto makers can be best
described as a battery electric vehicle equipped with an
unnecessary fuel engine and fuel tank," Honda
President and CEO Takeo Fukui said at the company's
research-and-development center. He said he was referring
to plug-in hybrids such as the Chevy Volt.
Yet, Toyota countered recently that electric cars can be a
dangerous proposition for those interested in global
warming. For instance, a country like China generates
almost all its electricity via coal. Adding electric cars
to that infrastructure is an environmental disaster
waiting to happen.
Isn't it really about flexibility?
The next generation of automobiles is still dependent upon
multiple technological obstacles, and almost anything is
possible. Still, companies like GM and Toyota are putting
themselves in a position to easily ramp up their platforms
in any direction.
Toyota's Hybrid
Synergy Drive has already been prototyped into a
plug-in hybrid, a hydrogen hybrid, a pure fuel cell
vehicle, and the move to a pure electric vehicle is within
reach. Ultimately, Toyota's hybrid platform is built for
flexibility and adaptation. Most important, however, it
enables Toyota to progressively scale towards
electrification - whether that means electric vehicles, plug-in
hybrids or fuel cell vehicles.
GM's E-Flex
Platform is very similar to the Hybrid Synergy Drive
in its scalability towards electrification. The E-Flex
platform is designed in a way that a plug-in hybrid, such
as the Volt, could just as easily be produced into a fuel
cell Volt, or an electric Volt, even a lithium-powered
Volt with or without plug-in technology. The E-Flex
platform, like the Hybrid Synergy Drive, is being
developed to evolve, to adapt, to FLEX around
breakthroughs in lithium, fuel cells, hydrogen,
capacitors, etc.
Ultimately, GM and Toyota are diversifying, preparing to
go in any direction, even all directions.
Honda and Nissan, on the other hand, have a few less eggs
in their basket.
Of course, since GM and Toyota are the super powers in the
autoworld - essentially needing to be in every market to
survive - diversification is their only option.
Neither the Volt nor the Prius is THE future
Focusing on the Volt, for example, as THE icon of GM's
future is pure nonsense.
The Chevy Volt, could be a complete failure, and GM could
still succeed. It's not the Volt that matters. The Volt is
just a car. It's the E-Flex Platform that really matters,
and the E-Flex Platform is far from dependant upon the
success of the Volt. It might just turn out that the next
generation Equinox
Fuel Cell vehicle - another E-Flex Platform vehicle -
makes the Volt irrelevant.
That's why, at this point in time, the debate between
hybrids and electrics is laughable. Anything is possible,
and automakers are just posturing, just trying to position
themselves in the minds of autowriters and consumers as
the leaders of the next generation of technology.
Inevitably, it will be the cars, and consumers, that have
the final word.
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