According to a survey conducted in June 2020 by the market research institute Innofact on behalf of Bosch, no powertrain types have lost any of their relevance — whether batteries or fuel cells, petrol or diesel engines.

If the 2,500 survey respondents in Germany, France, Italy and the UK had to decide on a new car tomorrow, one in two would opt for a stand-alone combustion engine for their primary car and around one in three the same for their second car.

However, when asked what would be the most used powertrain in 2030, some 68% of those polled see the electrical powertrain in pole position, ahead of hybrids and combustion engines. Survey participants acknowledged the potential of fuel cell-powered cars, with around one in three seeing the fuel cell as the future of mobility.

Electric mobility
Stefan Hartung, chairman of Bosch’s Mobility Solutions business sector, said: “Electric mobility is on its way, and that is good news. This year alone, Bosch is investing 500 million euros in this domain. At the same time, we are also continuously refining the internal combustion engine because it is still needed.”

A further question reveals respondents’ open-mindedness toward powertrains of all types. When asked whether they favour incentives for vehicles equipped solely with combustion engines, in addition to the many government subsidies for electric cars and plug-in hybrids, 70% of the Europeans polled said they would.

The number of respondents in favour of government incentives to buy new cars with a conventional powertrain is highest in Italy at 83% and lowest in the UK at 60%.

Dr Hartung said: “Incentivising modern combustion engines can accelerate the vehicle fleet’s renewal, which would also help the environment and the climate,” adding that even cars with conventional engines can run in a climate-neutral way. The key to this is renewable synthetic fuels (RSF), which are made from renewable hydrogen and CO₂ captured from the surrounding air.

“There is just no way around renewable synthetic fuels if we want to achieve our climate targets. Only with RSF can the more than one billion vehicles already on the road world-wide help contain global warming. For the foreseeable future, the car will remain the number one means of transport — and has excellent prospects of becoming even more climate-friendly.”

Bosch expects around one-third of all newly registered vehicles world-wide to be purely electric by 2030. Two-thirds of all new vehicles will still be powered by a combustion engine, many of them as hybrids.