Green migration 'overhyped'

The internal combustion engine will be around for a long time yet. Photo / Supplied

The internal combustion engine will be around for a long time yet.

Don't expect hybrids and electric vehicles to dominate the automotive landscape anytime soon - that's the word from US research company J.D. Power and Associates.

It says the sales potential of hybrids and EVs is "overhyped" and predicts many years ahead for the conventional combustion engine.

It estimates hybrids and EVs will make up little more than 7 per cent of all global passenger-vehicle sales by 2020. In other words, 93 per cent of cars sold in 2020 will be running petrol or diesel engines.

It says its research shows that many potential buyers are not ready to make the leap. Concerns include the cars' reliability, power and performance, and how far all-electric models can travel on a single charge - so-called "range anxiety".

The significant price premium for electric and hybrid vehicles is another major sticking point despite the long-term savings consumers can expect from buying less petrol or diesel.

Just 2.2 per cent of the more than 44 million vehicles expected to be sold worldwide this year will employ some kind of battery propulsion system.

"Consumers will ultimately decide whether these vehicles are commercially successful or not," said John Humphrey, senior vice president of automotive operations at J.D. Power.

"Based on our research of consumer attitudes toward these technologies - and barring significant changes to public policy, including tax incentives and higher fuel economy standards - we don't anticipate a mass migration to green vehicles in the coming decade."

Analysts believe EVs and hybrids will remain expensive for at least the next 10 years. "The bottom line," says a European researcher, "is that improvements to the internal combustion engine mean that the millions of affordable, low-CO2 fuel-powered cars that will be sold in the next 10 years will have a greater impact on cutting overall emissions than a couple of hundred thousand pricey EVs and hybrids."

But carmakers like Nissan and General Motors are more bullish, both having poured millions of dollars into developing hybrids and EVs.

The J.D. Power forecast is tempered by caveats regarding energy prices, technological advancements and government policy.

For example, a "significant increase in the global price of petroleum-based fuels" could result in a major market shift away from conventionally powered vehicles, the report acknowledges.

Technological breakthroughs that reduce the cost of hybrid or electric cars or government policies that substantially promote alternatively powered vehicles would also boost sales.

"None of these scenarios are believed to be likely during the next 10 years," the report concludes.

But the report acknowledges that the age of the internal combustion engine will not last forever. As oil supplies eventually peak and subside, battery-propelled vehicles will by necessity fill the void, it says.

"Experts disagree about when global oil production will peak (if it hasn't already), but virtually everyone would agree that oil is a finite resource and that at some point in the future it will either run out or, more likely, the energy required to discover and produce new sources of oil will be greater than the energy received from harvesting it," the report states.

"In either case, oil will have run its course as the primary fuel powering the internal combustion engines that drive traditional vehicles."

Meanwhile, Honda CEO Takanobu Ito believes there could be plenty of demand for EVs, an endorsement of the technology that his predecessor had long shunned as impractical and unrealistic.

Japan's second-biggest carmaker will take the wraps off a new electric car concept at this month's Los Angeles motor show and launch a plug-in hybrid and EV in 2012.

"It's starting to look like there will be a market for electric vehicles," said Ito, who took over as CEO last year. "We can't keep shooting down their potential, and we can't say there's no business case for it."

Under previous CEO Takeo Fukui and other former executives, Honda had been a strong proponent of hydrogen fuel-cell cars as the best zero-emission alternative to combustion engine cars because they have a similar range of 500-600km, unlike EVs' limited reach.

Ito said that EVs made more sense than plug-in hybrids. "Plug-in hybrids are essentially for people who drive short distances, but it [plug-in] has the handicap of having an engine, a motor and a stack of batteries," he said. "Why wouldn't you just drive an EV?"