So long as this scarcity remains, a major concern is that the push to pure battery electric vehicles (BEVs) will crowd out a more effective programme of mass hybridisation. Put another way, given the urgency of the need to reduce CO2, paradoxically BEVs may not be the best way to achieve it with their supply chain, production capacity, infrastructure and customer acceptance challenges. The assertion that BEVs are required to solve air quality problems is confusing the argument – cities in Europe can be brought into compliance with conventional internal combustion engines, with technology on the market today. Electrification is first and foremost a CO2 reduction technology, but what strategy mix represents the correct path?



This newsletter is inspired by recent insightful articles by Kevin Brown: https://bit.ly/30j50Ed and https://bit.ly/30oC1yM. His insights on the efficiency of carbon reduction can be put together with the Emissions Analytics’ database of real-world testing over almost 100 hybrids vehicles to see in more detail the most efficient options for electrification and CO2 reduction.



As with tailpipe pollutant reduction, CO2 reduction comes down to how to achieve it as cost-efficiently and quickly as possible. Emissions fell during the financial crisis, but at the significant price of sharply reduced economic activity – not desirable. So, how best to deliver road transportation’s part in meeting the Paris climate change targets? The apparent consensus is to transition to pure electric vehicles as rapidly as possible. But is this singular focus better than a combined strategy employing a wide variety of hybrid electric vehicles?



The problem with the pure electric vehicle approach is that the transition will be slow, BEVs need disproportionately large batteries to give acceptable consumer utility, just as battery capacity is currently a scarce resource. As cumulative CO2 emissions are important for climate change – due to the long life of the gas in the atmosphere – a smaller reduction per vehicle now, but across many more hybrid vehicles, would eliminate a far greater volume of CO2 than applying the scarce battery resource to a smaller number of BEVs. This approach also helps mitigate naturally slow fleet turnover, with the average age of cars on the road being over twelve years.



So, what does the real-world performance data of hybrids look like?



The following analysis takes the mild, full and plug-in hybrid vehicles tested by Emissions Analytics in both Europe and the United States. Each hybrid is paired with its nearest equivalent internal-combustion-engine-only vehicle, often the same make and model with a similar engine size. The difference in average CO2 emissions over Emissions Analytics’ standard on-road cycle between the hybrid and its conventional-engined pair is then calculated.



The first table focuses on mild and full hybrids, excluding plug-ins, and shows the average tailpipe CO2 reductions that are achievable with models that are currently on the market, or that have been sold over the last seven years since Emissions Analytics started its test programme.