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Jan 27, 2010

Hybrid Truck Industry * USA - Barriers to Commercialization Still Exist For

Why is the hybrid truck industry still in an early stage, almost 10 years behind the market introduction of passenger hybrids?

Troy,MI,USA -Truckinginfo, by Diana Britton -26 Jan 2010: ... According to The Hybrid Commercial Vehicles Report, published by SupplierBusiness, an IHS Global Insight Company, all the major truck manufacturers and hybrid system developers in the U.S. are on board with the technology... But not enough fleets have adopted the technology to keep costs down and kick commercialization of hybrid technology into full gear. The SupplierBusiness report says that in order to reduce the price premium to an acceptance level, each manufacturer would need sales to range from 5,000 to 8,000 units per year. Currently, fleet sales are in the 500 to 1,000 range per year for each manufacturer... The cost of a hybrid vehicle is a large barrier to market adoption among fleets. For example, commercial vehicles need considerably larger and heavier battery packs to support an electric hybrid solution, and these batteries can represent a considerable upcharge... This is where government funding comes into play.... Strict emissions regulations coupled with government grants have buoyed the U.S. market for Class 6, 7 and 8 trucks, the report says. Kenworth, Peterbilt, Navistar and Freightliner have all introduced Class 8 hybrid models. Prototype tests are underway with major operators such as Wal-Mart... According to Pike Research, fleet sales are expected to reach 830,000 units worldwide in 2015, with hybrids reaching 8 percent of all fleet sales in North America by 2015... Meanwhile, the Hybrid Truck Users Forum estimates a market of about 21,000 hybrid trucks in the U.S. in 2015, growing to about 65,000 in 2020...


* Comment by Kal Gyimesi: Any other ideas out there??

Richmond,VA,USA -Truck 2020. Trascending turbulence -27 Jan 2010: -- Interesting article, but one of the key barriers that this is missing is that the high cost of hybrids (and low cost of fuel) essentially capitalizes the expense of fuel. Not too many accountants will allow Fleets to do that in a large way... Truck OEMs must develop new business models that fix this issue until costs for Hybrid trucks can be leveled out. Business models such as removing the cost of batteries and setting them up as a leased component of the the transaction are being considered. Another model could be to simply sell the truck at the cost of a conventional vehicle and then set up a set of annuity payments to fleets based on their fuel usage. That way they get the benefits of the hybrid truck, pay similar to what they are now from an accounting standpoint and contribute to developing scale...

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1 Comments:

Blogger Kal Gyimesi said...

http://truck2020.blogspot.com/2010/01/trucks-world-news-hybrid-truck-industry.html

8:43 AM  

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