1、Place your billion-dollar bets wiselyPowertrain strategies for the post-ICE automotive industryFor more than a century,the automotive industry has been defined by one constant and arguably dominant force:the reign of the internal combustion engine(ICE).Now,a tsunami of investmentsome$200 billionhas

2、hit the industry from automotive start-ups,established automakers and suppliers,even tech companies that are betting on a new powertrain king:the battery electric vehicle(BEV).As we publish this paper,the Biden administration has proposed a raft of new supports for the U.S.EV business,including fres

3、h buyer incentives.Add in the momentum created by the enormous success of Tesla,global concerns around climate change,and new regulatory regimes that could literally outlaw ICE powertrains,and you have a new auto industry,dominated by BEV powertrains.A BEV future is clearly the current conventional

4、wisdom.But is it right?Or,as is often the case,is conventional wisdom,well,simply too conventionalor just overly simplistic?This is not a theoretical question,given the billions at stake.We believe that the coming years will be far more complicated and unpredictable than the conventional wisdom sugg

5、ests.For starters,billions of people live in developing economies where incomes and electric grids prevent consumers from switching to BEVs.Even in wealthy countries like the U.S.,the charging infrastructure is not fully in place for BEVs.Nor is the grid sufficiently robust for a nation of BEV charg

6、ersor safe from the scary threat of cyber intrusion,(or even severe weather).Then there is physics,which heavily favors ICE.A full gas tank has the same energy as 1,000 sticks of dynamite.Gasoline has about 100 times the energy density of a lithium-ion battery.Notwithstanding the tremendous advances