Timing
Many in the automobile industry believe it is unlikely that rapid technological shifts will occur,
as demonstrated by recent Delphi studies projecting an automobile fleet in 2003 that looks very
much like today’s.^34 In contrast, advocates of advanced vehicle technologies have tended to
predict that such technologies can be introduced to the fleet in very short order. Indeed, the
California ZEV initiatives assume that 10 percent of the state’s new vehicle fleet can be EVs by
2003; the PNGV hopes to have at least a manufacturable prototype vehicle capable of achieving
triple today’s fuel economy by 2004; and several small manufacturers have exhibited prototype
vehicles that they claim can be introduced at competitive prices as soon as sufficient financial
support (or orders for vehicles) is obtained.Predicting when a technology is ready for commercialization is particularly difficult because the
act of commercialization is simultaneously a technical and a marketing decision—it hinges largely
on a company’s reading of the marketplace and on its willingness to accept risk, as well as on the
actual state of the technology. Nevertheless, OTA believes it is more realistic to be fairly
conservative about when many of the advanced technologies will enter the marketplace.
Also, the history of market introductions of other technologies strongly implies that technologies
will penetrate the mass market part of the vehicle fleet only after they have been thoroughly tested
in smaller market segments—a process that can take from three to five years after initial
introduction for incremental technologies, and more for technologies that require major design
changes.
For example, even if the PNGV were fully successful—and OTA believes that its goals are
extremely challenging-developing a manufacturable prototype by 2004 would likely yield an
actual marketable vehicle no earlier than 2010. Furthermore, as noted, the first vehicles are likely
to be small volume specialty vehicles, with entry into the true mass-market segments starting from
three to five or more years later, depending on the market success of the new models. Finally,
unless the first vehicles were overwhelmingly successful, the transformation of the new car and
light truck fleets would take at least a decade. In other words, absent a crisis that would force a
risky acceleration of schedules, it might be 2020 or 2025 before advanced vehicles had
thoroughly permeated the new vehicle fleet—and it would be another 10 to 15 years before
they had thoroughly permeated the entire fleet. Thus, major impacts of advanced technologies
on national goals are decades away, at best.
DETAILED RESULTS
OTA’s results focus specifically on a range of technology combinations in mid-sized
automobiles, the heart of the light-duty fleet, including vehicles representing a continuation of
current trends (business as usual); vehicles representing major improvements in conventional
powertrains (advanced conventional); battery-powered EVs; hybrid vehicles that combine more
34 Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation, Delphi VII Forecast and Analysis of the North American Automotive Industry, Volumes 2
(Technology) and 3 (Materials) (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Transportation Research Center, February 1994).