Electrification turns out to be a mild jolt for Volvo
Company’s plans to go electric by 2019 don’t mean the end is in sight for internal combustion engines, David Booth explains.
My, oh my, didn’t Volvo just let the cat loose among the pigeons! What seemed like a normal news week, with the mainstream media trying to make headlines out of a boring G20 conference, exploded with news that Volvo was “abandoning” the internal combustion engine.
Even Donald Trump’s failed handshake didn’t garner as much attention, and Emmanuel Macron’s threat to impose capitalism on his socialist French subjects was relegated to Page 2 news.
OK, I exaggerate. But, nonetheless, there was much fevered talk of internal combustion’s impending Waterloo. Hard questions were posed: Would Big Oil be out of business in the next few years? Would all Volvos really be electric by 2019? So dramatic was the alarm that it behooves us to step back, take a deep breath and put Volvo’s news release into perspective.
Officially, Volvo’s statement promised to “electrify” all its cars by 2019. That didn’t stop some in the media from implying the automaker would soon convert its entire fleet into Teslalike electric vehicles; The New York Times declared “Volvo Cars became the first mainstream automaker to sound the death knell of the internal combustion engine.”
What the company’s official statement proclaims is that, by 2019, it “will introduce a portfolio of electrified cars across its model range, embracing fully electric cars, plug-in hybrid cars and mild-hybrid cars.” The key word in that sentence, I suspect, is “mild,” as in some — probably most — of the electrified vehicles the Chinese-owned automaker is promising will be mild hybrids. Depending on your perspective, mild hybrids are either hardly electric or the near-term future of mobility.
Essentially, what a mild hybrid does is replace a gasoline engine’s traditional alternator with a high-voltage motor-generator unit (MGU). By souping up the electric system, mild hybrids are able to extend the operation of stop/start mechanisms — those annoying systems that shut down your engine when you stop and then instantly start them again when you put your foot on the gas — to shut down the gas engine when you’re coasting on the highway, flying down hills or just noodling around town. They also allow a little brake regeneration — recouping electrical charge when the car is braking — and can even act as a (very mild) power booster. They are also more efficient at driving ancillaries such as modern electric power steering systems, reducing the parasitic drag on the engine.
You’ll note that nowhere in the previous paragraph did I mention an electric motor, Prius-like, driving the vehicle’s wheels. That’s because current mild hybrids can only indirectly supply power to the wheels — essentially through the alternator’s rubber belt to the gasoline engine — but not to the wheels directly. The gas engine still does all the grunt work, the small MGU serving only as an assist.
Future “mild” systems may be able to power the wheels more directly by connecting to the transmission rather than the engine, but measured by popular perception — a hybrid being defined as a vehicle with an electric motor attached directly to its wheels — current mild hybrids aren’t hybrids at all, merely gas engines with steroidal alternators. So why the hubbub? Well, for one thing, European automakers are desperate for a low-cost gasoline/electric alternative to the much-denigrated diesel engine, while suppliers are touting fuel consumption improvements of greater than 10 per cent for mild hybridization. For another, mild hybrids are comparatively dirt cheap, costing between US$600 and US$1,000 to add a 48-volt charging system to a vehicle.
Cost is why I suspect most of the “electrification” Volvo is promising will be mild. By way of example, the company’s XC90 T6 sport ute is powered by Volvo’s incredibly efficient supercharged and turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine. The T8 version of the same vehicle takes that powertrain and adds an electric motor and a 9.2 kWh battery. A true “plugin,” the T8 eAWD can travel about 20 kilometres on electric power alone and is rated at a little over 9.0 L/100km compared with the 10.6 L/100 km the gasoline-only T6 consumes.
The problem is the T8 costs $74,450 versus the T6’s $62,700. I’ll save you reaching for your iPhone: the difference is $11,750. The smaller XC60 sees an even bigger $17,350 jump to the T8 plug-in version.
So, unless Volvo is determined to commit sjalvmord (the Swedish word commonly denoting suicide also happens to mean self-destruction) we shouldn’t be looking for plug-in powertrains in every 2019 V60. Chances are, for the foreseeable future the vast majority of all Volvos will still be powered by good oldfashioned internal-combustion engines.
Does this diminish the import of Volvo’s pronouncement? Other than perhaps a little deliberate — perhaps I should say cynical — manipulation of a gullible media, I’d say no, not at all. Even mild hybrids, as simple and deceivingly named as they may be, are a worthwhile step forward, one that will reduce the company’s carbon footprint. To universalize that technology is noteworthy news. Besides, Volvo is also promising to unveil five actual electric vehicles between 2019 and 2021.
Perhaps more importantly, does this advance the cause of electric vehicles?
Well, yes and no. The yes part of that answer lies in furthering the perception, in the public’s eyes, that the era of electrification is inevitable. Other automakers will no doubt view the reaction to Volvo’s pronouncement with envy and want to capitalize on similar statements.
On the no side, it’s doubtful the pronouncement will spur any new technological advancement, mainly because all automakers are already furiously developing similar mild-hybrid technology. Why Volvo has the upper hand in this race is it uses essentially the same 2.0-L four-cylinder engine to power all of its cars. This gives Volvo a huge advantage compared with giants such as General Motors in having to only re-engineer one powertrain, as opposed to many.
The ultimate irony, however, in all the attention being paid Volvo’s missive is that mild hybrids are hardly new. What is now being celebrated as a breakthrough for Volvo was first introduced almost a decade ago by none other than GM as its belt-alternator-starter system (BAS) on Saturn, Buick and Chevrolet engines.
Perhaps it’s a measure of The General’s lack of reputational equity or simply a matter of poor timing, but the American version of mild electrification was roundly decried as less than hybrid and sold poorly.
Sometimes, public relations are more important than engineering.