Automotive Engineering - December 2022 - 23

PROPULSION FEATURE
TENSION
AND THE
ELECTRIC
TAKEOVER
F
ew 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 propulsionsystem
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).
The challenges of maintaining two distinctly different
product development paths are intense. It's a
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
BMW's new iX3 electric
vehicle coming off an
assembly line in Shenyang,
China. BMW has elected
to mitigate some of the
risks of transitioning to
electrification by designing
models to use either IC or
electric propulsion.
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.
by Bill Visnic
major factor in Ford's decision in early 2022 to segregate its " legacy "
ICE-propulsion business into a new business unit called Ford Blue
and operate it separately from the recently created Model e division
devoted to EVs. Ford Blue's profits will continue to fund development
of electrified technologies and products. The two separate businesses
will support one another, according to the company.
Mitigating the risk of unknown regarding EV penetration rates a
decade from now - i.e. determining how much one has to remain in
the ICE business - may take many forms. All are based on how much
market share EVs will acquire - and how soon. A variation of Ford's
two-unit business strategy is Volvo Cars and its parent company,
Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. In mid-2022, Volvo and Geely established
Aurobay, a venture comprised of two IC-engine manufacturing
plants, one in China and the other being Volvo's facility in Skovde,
Sweden. Aurobay was envisioned as a way to partition the capital
assets of IC engine-making in order to improve scale. The unit also
intends to shop its engine-production business to outside companies.
Michael Fleiss, CEO of Aurobay's Powertrain Engineering Sweden
unit, sees consolidation of IC engine production as a hedge against
the unknowns of the next decade of EV market penetration.
" The worst thing that can happen to the climate and the world is
that there's no further development of these technologies, " Fleiss
told Bloomberg. Merging engine-production assets " would absolutely
make sense economically, " he insisted. " Aurobay's two facilities make
some 750,000 ICEs, and Fleiss doesn't envision conventional engines
as a dying prospect. " Even if all these predictions and ambitions of
December 2022 23
BMW
Automotive Engineering - December 2022

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