A new start for engines

When reporter Karin Olander of Sweden’s leading business daily’s Dagens Industri visited Aurobay’s Skövde factory, she found a place confident in the future of hybrid powertrains.

‘By 2040,’ says CEO Michael Fleiss in the article, ‘70% of cars will still have an engine – unless there’s an extensive, global scrapping program. There are too many cars in the world that cannot be replaced with BEVs and there is not enough clean electricity to charge them with.’

Biofuels, he remarks, should play a larger role in climate change debates. ‘Now you can make ethanol without destroying harvests,’ he says. Hybrid engines will need to be powered by renewable fuels, instead of petrol and diesel.’

In the article, Karin Olander comments that a walkthrough of the Skövde factory shows the high degree of automation, from robots to autonomous transports. Alongside the production of hybrid engines, part of the plant will be converted to enable complete in-house production of E-drives for Volvo Cars, following an investment of 700 million SEK.

Aurobay’s employees are certainly confident in the business’ future. When Michael and his management team presented their plans a year ago, 1995 out of 2,000 employees decided to stay on.

Dagens Industri notes that an important task for CEO Michael Fleiss is to find new customers for Aurobay’s hybrid powertrains. ‘We’re in discussions with several parties, especially in Europe,’ Michael says. ‘Hybrid engines have a future – and we’re continuing to develop them. Electrification is not the only answer to global warming.’

Read the Dagens Industri article in Swedish and behind a paywall here.