The chairman of Bosch’s automotive group – the world’s biggest supplier to the car industry – today crushed any hope that hybrids could become a major tool to cut CO2 emissions in Europe.
Dr Bernd Bohr told CAR Online that even by 2015, fewer than 5 percent of all new cars sold in Europe will be hybrids. ‘We are talking tens of thousands per manufacturer, not hundreds of thousands,’ he said. ‘Hybrid technology does not make sense unless you are driving in city traffic.’ His attack proves that hybrids will remain a bit part player in a European market of 17 million cars a year; Bohr said that many manufacturers were currently in the early stages of developing hybrid know-how, but very few had actually committed. Bosch currently employs just 200 engineers on the technology – largely to learn more about battery tech. But he admitted hybrids would play a small role in bringing carbon emissions down – especially in big, heavy premium cars and SUVs. ‘They make sense for these customers, who want a big expensive car but don’t want to be seen to be excessive,’ added Bohr. Bosch today confirmed it was working with VW, Audi and Porsche to bring a petrol-electric off-roader to market by 2008 – the jointly developed Touareg, Q7 and Cayenne. Speaking at Bosch’s bi-annual technical seminar, Bohr said that the bulk of CO2 cuts would come from using clever tech on existing combustion engines. Devices like stop-start, which use around 8 percent less fuel in cities, will become more popular and bio fuels will become more widespread, he predicted. Bosch, which supplies an average of €800 of components on each European car, forecasts that the new type of diesel-electric hybrids being pioneered by the likes of Peugeot-Citroen, will save 40 percent of CO2 compared with a conventional engine; petrol hybrids meanwhile save around 25 percent. ‘We do not think that hybrid engines will be successful in the long term – they are too expensive,’ said Bohr. Instead, so-called mild hybrids – including the stop-start systems recently announced on the BMW 1-series and Mini, will become widespread. Bohr predicted a fifth of new cars will have this tech by 2015.