120 comments on Can hybrids make a difference in the near future?
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I feel its a simplistic argument to assume that all will remain the same (renewal of the fleet and current driving behavior) and one will change (number of hybrids purchased). If hybrid growth accelerates then you will see other manufacturers offer hybrids obscenely quickly and as fuel price increases driving behavior will change, also consider the major hurdle for hybrids, cost, will quickly become irrelevant. So predictions based on simple models are fault prone.
Neven MacEwan B.E. E&E
Did you try to calculate the resulting savings with another set of assumptions? It would give your argument a little bit more credibility.
Even doubling the fleet replacement rate and doubling the share of hybrids does very little. Those figures are already quite optimistic.
After doubling, it is perhaps possible to negate all of the effects of normal traffic growth, so absolute car fleet fuel consumption would indeed decrease slightly per annum.
However, one must factor in various real life issue:
- lorries, trucks and other non-personnel fleet (availability of hybrids, annual replacement rate)
- availability of hybrid car capacity
- subsequent increase in electricity power generation (via coal probably) for PHEVs
As such - it is painfully obvious that significant annual motor fuel savings are probably not easy to implement through mere hybrid fleet replacement in a short period of time (<20 years)*.
Of course, this is not to say PHEV/Hybrids can't be part of the answer, but nobody should delude themselves into thinking that it is _the_ answer.
* doubling hybrid share and fleet replacement would still give a fuel consumption halving time of c. 44 years with current yearly vehicle mile growth.