TENSION AND THE ELECTRIC TAKEOVER

While the industry bets on an EV future, achieving aggressive market-penetration forecasts will prove difficult. ICEs will serve as a hedge against the risk.

Few challenge the premise that EVs are the transportation end game. But there are persistent questions regarding how soon North America and other world regions will achieve the EV sales penetration rates being projected by OEMs and mandated by legislators. Why? It's an investment gamble on a massive scale. Getting the transition from the ICE-dominated present to the electrified future wrong will jeopardize not only the auto industry but entire national economies as well.

Lithium-ion batteries and new EV platforms are “very new and very expensive,” yet a protracted propulsion-system transition is “forcing the OEMs to maintain a legacy business and pursue this new one,” said Chris Atkinson, professor of mechanical engineering and director of smart mobility at Ohio State University. “Perhaps it's a blessing insofar as they've been able to make profits on the existing technology to subsidize their new ventures,” he noted. “But at some point, it catches up with them in terms of being able to maintain the two simultaneously. It's an incredibly difficult equation to manage.” Atkinson's perspective is informed from several years as program director of the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E).