In Kenya’s race to go electric, hybrids take the lead

Between them, they are likely to soon equal sales of new vehicles with internal combustion engines, and thereafter dominate. Policy makers and the tax man will strongly support that trend.

But dominant sales, even when they amount to tens of millions of units per year, will not transform the world overnight. There are well over a billion road-going vehicles, and it will take decades to replace them all…and reconfigure national infrastructures and markets.

Kenya is a minuscule part of all this, and only 10 percent of its modest renewal and replacement market is supplied by “new” vehicles of any sort.  

The other 90 percent are about eight years old…on arrival. Under the current circumstances of technical upheaval, that is not necessarily a bad thing!

There are just three main options on the menu - vehicles that have internal combustion engines (ICE) running on petrol or diesel, vehicles that run on electricity (EV) stored in batteries that have to be plug-in recharged, and Hybrids (that use both sources of power) – but there are dozens of different design configurations, and all are evolving within and between their different formats.

Meanwhile, bear in mind all the other things that need power to move themselves (trains, ships, submarines, construction equipment etc) and all the other things that produce power (fossil fuels, generators, sun, wind, tides, ocean currents, hydro dams, geothermal mines, nuclear power stations etc) and the capital investment and operational costs of harvesting, distributing and accessing energy (mains grids, storage depots, fuel stations, batteries etc)…

All of these things are evolving within and between their fields -  scientists, politicians, financiers, businessmen, and the general public have conflicting vested interests and influences, different timelines, resources, objectives, strategies – and there are more wars as there are alliances, more ignorance than knowledge, more scams than facts…

In those circumstances, there is no answer to which of the three (or other as yet unknown) options will finally dominate or when, elsewhere or here.  

What we can recognise is that the answers are likely to vary significantly between markets with dramatically different levels of infrastructure, resources, national and personal affluence, climates, road conditions and traffic patterns, public transport options, social attitudes, etc.

The most highly developed markets – where vehicle volumes of all types are incomparably higher – are more able and inclined, and impelled to lead the transitions, and have the infrastructure, resources, and means to transition more quickly with full-time EVs.

But even in those markets, hybrids (in several different configurations) are “catching up” and are likely to predominate as ICE vehicle sales drop into third place, and EVs (after an initial flush) await a technical breakthrough in battery design. There’s a multi-trillion-dollar pot of business gold at the end of that market rainbow, so the search is not underfunded.  

In markets either unable or unwilling to take such a plunge, consumers are increasingly likely to take a more safety-first and wait-and-see approach.  

Hybrids offer that, assure continued mobility in less than perfect infrastructures, and deliver performance/usage characteristics that best align with the fastest growing category of cars – SUVs.

Gavin Bennett writes on motoring.