Lux Boosts Their Micro-Hybrid Vehicle Forecast to 39,000,000 Cars a Year By 2017

John Petersen

A couple days ago Lux Research published a new report titled “Every Last Drop: Micro‐ And Mild Hybrids Drive a Huge Market for Fuel‐Efficient Vehicles” that focuses on rapidly growing markets for micro-hybrid vehicles and their battery systems.

During 2011, automakers sold an estimated 5,000,000 micro-hybrids worldwide, mainly in Europe. By 2017, Lux forecasts global micro-hybrid sales of 39,000,000 cars a year and a $6.3 billion annual market for their battery systems, which represents an across the board average of $161 per vehicle compared to an auto industry average of less than $60 per vehicle in 2009. While most US investors aren’t even aware that micro-hybrid technology exists, it’s already crossed the chasm and become a mainstream automotive technology.

To put the micro-hybrid phenomenon into perspective, most auto industry observers believe combined global sales of HEVs, PHEVs and EVs will be lucky to reach the 2,000,000-vehicle a year mark by 2017. Electric drive technologies may become mainstream architectures for 2025 and beyond, but for the next six years there’s no doubt that cheap and easily implemented micro-hybrid technologies for mass-market vehicles will be at the epicenter of battery industry growth and profitability.

The term micro-hybrid is used to describe idle elimination systems that reduce fuel consumption by turning the engine off when it’s not being used to power the wheels. They typically replace both the starter motor and the alternator with a belt-driven starter-generator, or BSG, upgrade to a better battery and add required control electronics. No other changes are necessary. While a BSG will offer a couple horsepower of cranking and generate a couple kilowatts of electricity, BSG’s are not robust enough to drive a vehicle’s wheels. Nevertheless, they’re simple to combine with existing engine architecture and very cheap to implement. Because of their mechanical simplicity, micro-hybrids only cost $400 to $1,000 more than a conventional vehicle, but promise fuel savings of 5 to 15 percent. Micro-hybrids are a baby step, but 39,000,000 baby steps a year can cover a lot of ground and save about 15 millions of barrels of oil per year.

In their latest report, Lux divides micro-hybrids into three distinct classes that require different types of batteries.

Light Micro-Hybrids are typically sub-compact and compact cars that offer limited stop-start functionality and don’t have regenerative braking. The current batteries of choice for light micro-hybrids are enhanced flooded lead acid batteries. The global market for light micro-hybrids is expected to grow to 8.5 million vehicles per year by 2017.

Medium Micro-Hybrids range from sub-compact through full-size cars that offer greater stop-start functionality and may offer limited regenerative braking. The current batteries of choice for medium micro-hybrids are enhanced flooded lead acid batteries and advanced AGM batteries. The global market for medium micro-hybrids is expected to grow to 22.2 million vehicles per year by 2017.

Heavy Micro-Hybrids are typically mid-size and full-size cars that offer the highest level of stop-start functionality, take full advantage of regenerative braking and implement other fuel economy innovations. Because of their extreme power demands, heavy micro-hybrids need better performance than the best AGM batteries can offer. The global market for heavy micro-hybrids is expected to grow to 8 million vehicles per year by 2017.

The following graph from the latest Lux report shows how the market is expected to evolve over the next six years.

On a regional basis, Lux is forecasting that:

• The European micro-hybrid market will grow from over 4 million units in 2011 to 12.6 million units by 2017.
• The North American micro-hybrid market will grow from a standstill in 2011 to over 8 million units by 2017.
• The Japanese micro-hybrid market will grow from about 400,000 units in 2011 to over 6 million units by 2017.
• The Chinese micro-hybrid market will grow from under 300,000 units in 2011 to 8.9 million units by 2017.

Last November I used the following table to highlight the differences between the daily battery load in a normal car and the daily battery load in a micro-hybrid for a typical city driving commute with 15 engine-off opportunities per leg.

We’re all familiar with the flooded lead-acid batteries that have been standard automotive equipment for decades and I don’t think anybody would suggest that they can do 100 times the work without quickly failing. The automakers know that better batteries are needed, but they all want to get by with the cheapest better battery they can find because every dollar of cost matters in mass-market products.

Some automakers are using enhanced flooded batteries for their light and medium micro-hybrids solely because of cost considerations. They reason that enhanced flooded batteries offer twice the lifetime energy throughput of their simpler siblings and twice the throughput is always a good thing. The problem, of course, is that the numbers don’t balance if you double the throughput of the battery and expect it to do 100 times the work.

A similar, albeit less dramatic, dynamic exists for the automakers who are upgrading medium micro-hybrids to AGM batteries that cost twice as much as their more primitive cousins but offer ten times the lifetime energy throughput. After all, improving performance by an order of magnitude is huge – until you understand that they’re increasing the required work by two orders of magnitude. The bottom line is that AGM batteries will be the best available technology for micro-hybrids until a significantly better solution emerges, proves its merit and becomes available at relevant scale. Once a better solution is widely available, the market must gravitate to better performance unless the incremental cost exceeds the value of the incremental fuel savings.

I follow two companies that will be the first big beneficiaries of the rapid global adoption of micro-hybrid technologies. Johnson Controls (JCI) and Exide Technologies (XIDE) both manufacture enhanced flooded batteries for micro-hybrids
and are rapidly expanding their AGM battery manufacturing capacity in North America and Europe. They will clearly be preferred suppliers for light and medium micro-hybrids from American and European automakers for the foreseeable future. While enhanced flooded batteries won’t have a huge impact on either revenues or profits, their rapidly expanding AGM battery sales will double their per vehicle revenue and triple their per vehicle margins. It truly is a manufacturer’s dream scenario. As micro-hybrid production numbers ramp rapidly over the next few years I expect both companies to outperform the market’s expectations by a wide margin.

From my perspective the most interesting segment is heavy micro-hybrids that demand more performance than AGM batteries can hope to deliver. These next generation systems will push the frontiers of micro-hybrid technology by maximizing regenerative braking and adding other nuanced features like passive boost, which disables the BSG during acceleration, opportunity charging, which increases power to the BSG when the vehicle is decelerating, and engine-off sailing, which turns the engine off while the vehicle is rolling to a stop. The heavy micro-hybrid market is the prime target for two advanced technology systems that are working their way through the development and commercialization process, and stand a good chance of becoming industry leaders over the next few years.

In the fall of 2010, Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) and Continental AG introduced a dual device system that matches a supercapacitor module from Maxwell with an AGM battery and control electronics from Continental. The first design win for the Maxwell-Continental system is diesel powered micro-hybrids from Peugeot-Citroën. A comparable system will be used by Mazda in it’s iELOOP heavy micro-hybrid. Other automakers will almost certainly follow their lead in adopting dual device systems for heavy micro-hybrids.

A second advanced energy storage system for heavy micro-hybrids is the PbC battery from Axion Power International (AXPW.OB). The PbC is an integrated battery-supercapacitor hybrid that combines lead-based positive electrodes from a battery with carbon based negative electrodes from a supercapacitor in a single cell. While the PbC is not yet available as a commercial product for heavy micro-hybrids, it is two and a half years into evaluation by BMW and other leading automakers, and offers a performance profile that simply can’t be matched by anything short of a lithium-ion battery pack. If Axion can clear the last testing and manufacturing hurdles, the PbC has the potential to be a game changer in the heavy micro-hybrid space because it offers 5X the capacitance of dual device systems and 5X to 20X times the dynamic charge acceptance after a few months in service.

Last week I spent some time with a former Enersys engineer who noted that there are only two components in a car that automakers refuse to put their brand on. The first is the tires and the second is the battery. If a consumer has problems with either of those components, the automakers say, “Take it up with the manufacturer” who frequently says, “You abused our product by pushing it beyond design limits.”

While the traditional blame game has a long and storied history, it can’t continue indefinitely because micro-hybrids are being sold by the automakers as fuel efficiency and emissions control systems. Over the short term, the automakers will continue to play the game of using cheap batteries that can’t stand up to the duty cycle. Over the longer term, applicable regulations will change to require that the OEM battery installed in a micro-hybrid be designed to satisfy the requirements of the vehicle’s electric load profile.

For investors who want to benefit from the micro-hybrid vehicle trend but don’t have the time or inclination to study the various energy storage technologies in depth, a balanced portfolio weighted in favor of the large established battery manufacturers makes the most sense. While I have a personal favorite, I expect all four companies to outperform over the next three to five years.

Disclosure. Author is a former director of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and holds a substantial long position in its common stock.