Challenging the portfolio of powertrains perspective: Time to choose sides

Challenging the portfolio of powertrains perspective: Time to choose sides

Bakker, S.
Van der Vooren, A.

OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment

OTB Research

2012-12-31

In this viewpoint paper we challenge the portfolio perspective that envisions a future in which a wide variety of automotive powertrains and fuels will co-exist. We argue that this perspective is driven by normative ideas and rhetoric and that it is more likely that a very limited set of rather similar technologies will survive as successors to the fossil fuel powered internal combustion engine. Economies of scale of core components and the necessary build-up of infrastructures will eventually give these a decisive lead over its competitors. Our perspective has two implications. First, the cars of the future are and will be competitors and hence there will be winners and losers. Second, policy should be targeted at the set of technologies that are most desirable from a societal and environmental perspective, rather than at the wide variety that is being developed today. Given the challenges of climate change and local air pollution, the electrification of the powertrain should be prioritized at the expense of alternative fuels such as natural gas and biofuels

cars of the future, dominant design, innovation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:bada92a9-9ec1-499e-903e-274f2a101afa

World Electric Vehicle Association

26th Electric Vehicle Symposium EVS26, Los Angeles (United States), 6-9 May, 2012

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2012 Bakker, S., Van der Vooren, A.