Navigant: gasoline and diesel stop-start vehicles to represent 58% of all new vehicles sold in 2025

23 December 2014

In a new report analyzing the emerging global market for technologies that improve fuel economy, Navigant Research forecasts that sales of gasoline and diesel stop-start vehicles (SSVs) will reach 63 million annually by 2025, representing 58% of all vehicles sold in that year.

<!——>

SSVs eliminate idling when the vehicle is stopped and restart the engine when the driver moves from brake to accelerator. Over time, Navigant suggests, the SSV is likely to add functionality to become more of a mild hybrid, with the ability to capture and reuse kinetic energy without the expense of a large battery.

Although Navigant expects the use of alternative fuels and electric power to continue growing, gasoline will remain the leading fuel in the coming years, albeit in less conventional vehicles that employ a range of fuel-efficiency technologies, such as downsized engines and turbocharging. Diesel-fueled vehicles are expected to maintain a small growth in market volume and increasingly feature stop-start capability.

There is no single technology that will dominate fuel efficiency improvements over the forecast period through 2025. The focus, instead, will be on incremental improvements in engines and transmissions, along with weight reduction in as many places as possible.

Navigant expects global new vehicle production to increase slowly but steadily over the forecast period through 2025, with much of the increase coming from the Asia Pacific region.