Martin:::
That or some classes of vehicles we've come to know and love will disappear entirely from the automotive landscape. Now, in my opinion, that number will be closer to 10-15% than it would be to 40%.
The last time the Central Planners killed off a popular class of vehicle (the station wagon) they forced the market to go to truck chassis SUVs to get around the edict. This mandating thing is gonna make your job more lawyerly than engineering.
And I don't believe that hybrids are passing fad or that ICE engine advancements will remove the hybrid reason for being. The benefits of scavenging braking energy, natural start/stop tech, and the efficiency of electric drive motors are gonna make this tech. stick..
Larger questions exist about the wisdom of piling all our transportation power onto the grid for distribution.. You cannot seriously engineer a switch-over to electric vehicle power when you are telling folks to pull 1W chargers out of the walls and turn down their thermostats and replace their bulbs. We're not gonna get there having electrical generation at the edge of scarcity.. It's policy run amok..
Personally -- I think a better way to go would be to push on with fuel cells and make hydrogen from renewables (away from the GRID). You need fuel for transportation to be STORED.. That doesn't happen on the grid. You'll find that out 48 hours in advance of a hurricane when everyone needs to fuel up...
I also don't believe hybrids are a passing fad. I just don't think they will dominate the landscape like SUVs have in the US for the past 30 years. There are a number of paths to achieve the upcoming 2016 and 2020 fuel economy and emissions regulations. None of them is a silver bullet. As a result, we will see a blended set of solutions. Every large global automaker (GM, Ford, Toyota, FiatChrysler, Volkswagen, Honda, Hyundai) will have a mix of cars with downsized boosted engines (new BMW 5-Series has a 2.0 Liter 4-cylinder turbo instead of a 6 cylinder), diesels, hybrids, electric vehicles, and range extended electric vehicles. The trick is predicting which solutions work best in which classes of vehicle.
Don't believe me.....pick your favorite (or least favorite automaker) and google their name plus hybrid or BEV or diesel and see all the concept vehicles and production vehicles they are rushing to bring out with every one of the technologies I just mentioned. For giggles and grins, google BMW i-Series. Then note that the person running that program used to be the Chief Engineer for the Chevy Volt. Google Audi eTron. Or Mercedes E-Cell. These are production vehicles coming our way, folks. Volt was just first. The super cool Acura NSX sports car that Honda / Acura is going to build in Ohio in 2015 is a ......hybrid. Ferrari is going to replace the $1 million Ferrari Enzo with the Ferrari 599 which is......a hybrid.
When the US 2020 fuel economy regs hit.....54.5 mpg corporate fleet average, companies will be in the position where for every large SUV or pickup sold, they will have to sell a hybrid somewhere else in the portfolio to balance out their fuel economy position. Now, that is over-simplifying the situation, but basically, automakers will need to sell hybrids and electric vehicles in order to counter balance the poor fuel economy of pickups, SUV, and big engined sports cars.
So those of you who love SUVs and pickups should encourage the folks that like hybrids and EVs to buy more so that your pickups and SUVs can still be available at a reasonable price.