PSA pushes back diesel hybrid and moves it upmarket
While it has looked like Peugeot would be the first company to market a mainstream passenger vehicle with a diesel hybrid powertrain, it now looks like it won't come as quickly as previously thought. PSA (parent company of Peugeot and Citroen) has been developing a diesel hybrid system in cooperation with suppliers Bosch, Continental, Valeo and Thyssen-Krupp. The system was originally supposed to debut in the compact Peugeot 308 in 2010. The cost of developing the system was to have been partially subsidized by the French government. With the European Commission putting the screws to that plan, PSA and its partners will move forward without the handout. As a result, the company has decided that in order to recover those development costs, they need to apply the system on a more expensive model first, which of course means the volumes will be lower. The change in plans also means the new powertrain won't appear until at least 2011. At the current rate, Peugeot may still be first to market, unless Mahindra's plans for a diesel hybrid version of their pickup come to fruition in 2010.
[Source: GreenCarCongress]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
TheRookie 4:48PM (2/20/2008)
Does anyone know what happened to Opel Astra Diesel Hybrid that supposed to be released in 2009/2010?
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Emil 5:18PM (2/20/2008)
Very sad indeed. Now I'm also pessimistic about the Opel Astra diesel hybrid.
Today I filled my petrol Opel Astra 1995. It gets 13km to 1 litre (about 31MPG US).
However, buses & trucks proove that the combination of the diesel tech. with the hybrid one is viable.
So maybe India will take the lead. Or maybe China ?
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eddy 5:51PM (2/20/2008)
Does anyone know what happened to Opel Astra Diesel Hybrid that supposed to be released in 2009/2010?
I think Opel wanted to release the Flextreme Plugin-Hybrid with a Diesel-generator-option in 2010/2011. That car would be quite similar to an Astra.
PS: Vw is another player in the race for the first Diesel-hybrid. I read an interview with Ulrich Hackenberg (VW engineering leader), who stated that their normal hybrid-system will ship this year with the Audi Q5,Q7 and the VW Touareg. In 2009 a Hybrid-system for golf-based cars will be launched. Another nice statement of Hackenberg was that VW parallel-Hybrid system will be useable with gasoline and Dieselmotors.
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Mike 5:55PM (2/20/2008)
Just curious, but would it be possible to have a CVT plug-in biodiesel hybrid with variable cylinder management?
Sounds complicated, but really it would just be a combination of existing technologies
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Jared 6:53AM (2/21/2008)
A diesel engine is already $1000 more expensive to build than a gas engine. Add in at least another $1000 if it has to meet Tier 2 Bin 5. A hybrid is another $5000. The result is completely uneconomical.
And now you want to add variable cylinder management to that?
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rgseidl 1:13PM (2/21/2008)
In a parallel or compound hybrid configuration, a diesel engine is a suboptimal match for a beefy electric drivetrain: heavy and very expensive to produce. Full diesel hybrids would give marketing folks something to crow about, but they will never sell in high volume - even at European fuel prices.
Citroen already offer relatively inexpensive stop-start systems on many of its models. PSA ought to bite the bullet and make them standard issue across the entire model range of both brands, with the possible exception of the cheapest trim levels. For differentiation, the premium trim level of each model could feature an enhanced version with an ultracap bank.
All that small fry would really add up in terms of fleet average CO2 emissions. In due course, it would also enhance brand perception (cp. BMW).
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