Hybrids: 5 Years From Now

Building On Current Hybrid Technology
                                         
Hybrid vehicles are constructed by hybrid labs and utilize two or more power sources.  Some of the most popular power sources used today include gasoline or diesel fuel, hydrogen, compressed air, wind, solar energy, and a rechargeable energy storage system.  Presently, the most popular hybrid vehicle is a hybrid electric vehicle.  This type of automobile, created by a variety of hybrid labs, combines a car’s traditional combustion engine with one or more electric motors. 

In the coming years, hybrid labs hope to make several more improvements and advancements on current technologies being utilized.  Hybrid technology is intended to make alternate energy solutions for vehicles innovative, cost efficient, and ecological.  Hybrid technology has its premise in minimizing the use of fuel and the emission of gases through the vehicle’s exhaust.  This is done in part through stopping the vehicle’s engine when the vehicle stops, such as when the vehicle approaches and stops at a red light.  As the vehicle is driven, it may have its power boosted through the e-motor.  This will also improve the vehicle’s performance.

Hybrid Labs

Sandia is one of the hybrid labs presently participating in the “Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles.”  This research collaboration is set up between the United States Federal Government and the nation’s automotive industry.  Partners of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles include seven agencies, nineteen federal laboratories, and USCAR.  Each of these labs and partners researches a different area that would allow for a better, more efficient hybrid car.  Sandia is responsible for focusing on energy storage in the form of batteries. 

Johnson Controls Incorporated is one of the hybrid labs that has focused on the development of a lithium-ion battery for hybrid-electric vehicles.  The company is the largest manufacturer in the world when it comes to original automotive equipment, as well as aftermarket batteries.  Johnson Controls has been supplying, for hybrid-powered busses in Europe, nickel-metal-hydride batteries, but is interested in replacing these with lithium ion batteries.  Additional hybrid labs and industry laboratories working on the same type of research and products include Panasonic EV Energy and Sanyo Electric Company.  Panasonic EV Energy is the result of a concerted effort between Toyota and Matsushita Electrical Industrial Company. 

The Idaho National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory work together running the Advanced Vehicle Testing Activity.  Goals of these organizations include the benchmarking of data.  These data are often in relation to technology modeling, research, and programs of development.  One of the specific objectives of the companies is to validate the performances of plug-in electric hybrid vehicle technologies. 

Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies, Incorporated, unveiled in 2008 the world’s first Ford F-150 hybrid electric vehicle truck version.  The company worked to create a version of the truck, which offered a proprietary adaptive controller as well as a scaled-down proprietary drive train.  The vehicle went from getting approximately sixteen miles per gallon with a combustion engine to getting forty-one. 

The Plug-In Hybrid Development Consortium is a collaboration of many component suppliers.  These suppliers work together to accelerate the commercial production of PHEV’s, or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.  Consortium members work together to present innovative solutions to make such vehicles more affordable and build political support for the development of such vehicles. 

New Technologies From Hybrid Labs

Lithium ion batteries are beneficial because they have an energy density four times that of lead-acid batteries, as well as two to three times the energy density of other such energy sources, such as nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal hydride battery options.  Within recent years, Sandia has been able to create a number of new materials with relation to lithium ion batteries.  These advances include new electrode materials.  In these materials, synthetic carbons and lithiated manganese oxides are utilized.  The company also works on determining how and why lithium ion cells may fail, in order to identify the proper methods to correct such shortcomings. 

Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies, Incorporated, continues to work on plug-in hybrid train technology, including the electronics and software system - the Adaptive Control Unit.  The Adaptive Control Unit is utilized to control the hybrid drive train.  There is an in-dash display unit, which illustrates for the driver the performance of the vehicle, including the remaining charge in the battery and the energy that has been recovered with the regenerative braking. 

NREL works on the development not just of hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, but also fuel cell vehicles.  The organization is responsible for moving these vehicles from research to development, and finally on to the marketplace.  The laboratory began its work more than ten years ago.

Ssangyong developed a soft diesel hybrid technology.  One of its key technologies developed is the HCU, or Hybrid Control Unity.  This technology controls the performance of key systems in the vehicle.  The technology also includes a high voltage safety function.  The company has also developed independent software, which has been utilized to control diesel hybrid vehicles. 
i-StARS is a project from EUREKA that is in the process of developing a start-stop system for vehicles.  It would replace the conventional alternators in vehicles.  These systems would be compact, fully integrated, and cost efficient.  The market forecasts with respect to the system have projected a four percent penetration rate, worldwide, for micro-hybrid applications by the year 2015. 

Making Hybrids The Industry Standard

There are several things which still need to happen for hybrids to become an industry standard.  As it stands, hybrids still make up a relatively small number of the vehicles purchased in the nation.  The industry and hybrid labs need to develop cheaper and better car batteries, a network of charging stations, and a wireless standard for such vehicles.

What Can We Expect From Future Hybrids?

Industry projections calculate that the sales of Hybrid Electronic Vehicles in both the United States and Europe may reach approximately six million units by 2015.  JD Power & Associates also estimated that, in the United States, hybrid powered vehicles, such as HEV’s, would continue to increase to significant degrees in coming years.  Specifically, the organization predicts a rise in the market of 3.5 percent by 2012.

It is hoped by many hybrid labs, such as Sandia, that within fifteen years, Americans will be able to regularly drive hybrid electric cars, which will allow them eighty miles to the gallon.  As a result, the strictly internal combustion engine will become antiquated.  Lithium ion batteries are one way in which hybrid labs are working to promote alternate and reliable energy sources.  In these types of vehicles, the traditional internal combustion engine, powered by gasoline or diesel fuel, would be utilized for highway travel, while the electric powered motor would be used by the vehicle for the stop-and-go traffic of cities and more populated areas. 

Ssangyong has recently announced their plans for new models, which they will be producing over the next few years, from 2009 through 2014.  The company will be investing billions of dollars in twenty new models.  These models are based on five different platforms, including a diesel hybrid that is expected to cut carbon dioxide emissions, as well as improve the vehicle’s fuel efficiency by thirty percent. 

New York City’s Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has announced that every taxi in the city will become hybrid within the next five years.  This is important because such a move would produce thirty percent less carbon.  The plan presented by Bloomberg would implement a twenty percent increase in the number of hybrid vehicles in the city each year, for the next five years from 2009 on.  It is hoped that the trend will catch on in other densely populated cities.