IEEE Electrification Magazine - June 2014 - 80

viewpoint

EV/HEV Technology:
Are We There Yet?
By Bruno Lequesne

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MELE.2014.2314173
Date of publication: 24 June 2014

I E E E E l e c t r i f i c ati o n M agaz ine / J UN E 2014

Maximum
Tipping Point
Temporary Upswings
Typical of HEV/EV History

Innovators

the prius (for instance,
each with its own penetrains in the 1930s, mintration and diffusion pating equipment in the
tern, some fast and
1950s, and forklifts more
others slow, such that
recently). so, obviously,
the overall eV/HeV marthe time frame for the
ket-penetration s-curve
s-curve is measured in
is a combination of
decades and is spanning
many s-curves. along
over a century, an unusuthe same line, many
ally large scale for innohave pointed out that
vation penetration. this
eV/HeV technology is
and other factors make it Bruno Lequesne.
actually part of a bigger
particularly difficult to assess where
reality, namely, the electrification of
and when a penetration tipping point
the automobile. More and more funcwill be finally reached.
tions have been electrified, from fuel
perhaps one way to approach this
injectors and throttle actuators to
is to realize that eV/HeV engineering
steering. electric stop-start is now well
actually covers myriad of technologies,
up its penetration s-curve, with the

Market Penetratioin

rogress in transportation electrification and,
more specifically, hybrid
electric vehicles (HeVs) and eVs, has
ebbed and flowed, sometimes with
large swings, over the last several
decades. the enthusiasm around the
toyota prius' technical and commercial success led some to believe that
we had finally reached a tipping
point in terms of the acceptance of
electrified powertrains. Well, as travelers on the century-old transportation-electrification road, have we
reached our destination yet?
i'd like to present my answer by
looking at the progression of eVs and
HeVs from the perspective of the
diffusion-of-innovation theory in Diffusion of Innovations, written by rogers in the 1960s [1]. this book
popularized the s-curve (Figure 1),
which illustrates the rate of penetration of an innovation into culture or
of a new technology into the market,
propelled initially by innovators and
early adopters, before the majority
and, finally, the laggards make use of
the innovation. at that point, it has
saturated its potential market.
in the case at hand, eVs and HeVs
have been around since the beginning
of the automobile and did successfully
penetrate some niche nonautomotive
markets before, sometimes way before,

Early
Adopters

Early
Majority
Time

Late
Majority

Laggards

Time of Full Adoption
Potential Market Is Saturated

Figure 1. The S-curve illustrating the penetration of a novel technology into the marketplace, with
categories of adopters shown. At some point in time, a tipping point is reached after which the
technology is expected to succeed.
(continued on page 78)

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