History of Vehicle Electrification 19 partnered with the Battery Swapping start-up Better-Place in France for a short period of time to offer vehicles with the ability to “swap” a depleted battery for a fully charged one. Renault built on the success of the Leaf with the introduction of the Fluence, Kangoo, and Twizzy, all are fully electric vehicles based on the Nissan Leaf technology. Nissan’s focus on fully electric vehicles meant that their focus on hybrid vehicles was somewhat delayed with the Nissan Altima being introduced in 2007, which licensed the THS. This move allowed Renault–Nissan to maintain their focus on electric vehicles, while still allowing them to offer hybrid solutions.
In the United States, Ford and Chrysler were somewhat late followers to the hybrid and electric vehicle market. Chrysler, through the Daimler–Chrysler joint venture, used the jointly developed 2-Mode hybrid for several experimental and research fleets and developed a PHEV Ram pickup truck for a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) program. Chrysler continues to lag in their introduction of production hybrid and electric vehicles but have several new programs under development so expect to see announcements in the near future. Ford, on the other hand, followed a similar strategy as Nissan and bought themselves some time by licensing the THS to launch in the Ford Fusion.
This allowed Ford time to develop their own system, which continued to make the Ford Fusion hybrid a very strong seller in the United States. Ford followed this with a PHEV model, the C-Max. Ford also utilized the services of automotive Tier 1, Magna and their E-Car division to develop the fully electric Ford Focus. The Focus EV uses a 23 kWh lithium-ion battery with cells provided by LG Chem and the pack itself done by Ford. With continuously falling CO 2 emissions targets in Europe with the enactment of Euro 5 and Euro 6 emission standards, the European automakers have also been working hard on introducing new production hybrid and electric vehicle solutions.
BMW, Daimler, Audi, Fiat, Peugeot, and VW, among many others, are all working on both hybrid and fully electric vehicles introducing vehicles such as the Smart Fortwo, Fiat 500e, and the Think!. BMW now offers a full portfolio of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electric options on vehicles such as the e-Tron, the i-8, and ActiveHybrid by combining luxury and performance with fuel economy under the “Efficient Dynamics” moniker. VW introduced several entries into the hybrid, plug-in, and electric space including the e-Golf, the Audi A3 e-tron Plug-in hybrid, and Golf GTE.
In China, automakers began working on electrification solutions in the early 2000s due to the rapid growth of personal automobiles and the air pollution that this growth has caused, especially in the large cities, which drove governmental incentives and regulatory emissions requirements. Companies such as BYD, which started out as a lithium-ion cell manufacturer for small consumer electronics, grew to become a full-vehicle manufacturer offering hybrid, plug-in, and fully electric vehicle options as an outlet for their cell production. Other Chinese manufacturers followed suit, including Beijing Automotive Industry Corporation (BAIC),