Torotrak recently acquired Flybrid Automotive Ltd, the British engineering company pushing back the boundaries of hybrid vehicles. In this interview, Jeremy Deering, CEO and Jon Hilton, commercial director and formally managing director of Flybrid shared their objectives, challenges and realised benefits from the acquisition and plans for the future.
What led Torotrak to acquire Flybrid?
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Jeremy Deering: Independent reports from Ricardo and E4Tech confirm that pure mechanical hybrids, using mechanically driven flywheels, promise an extremely competitive solution to CO2 emissions reduction across many different categories of vehicle. The Flybrid technology has had more than five years and £9m of investment in development and testing and we believe it is the leading commercially-viable KERS technology in the market. We have had a long and successful relationship with Flybrid that builds on the synergies between our technologies, so it was a logical move to acquire the business for our shareholders. Our expertise in licencing and lower-volume manufacturing will help accelerate the commercialisation whilst Flybrid’s wide range of excellent customer relationships will open new opportunities across all of our products.
Who has joined your management team and what do they bring?
JD: Flybrid’s managing director and co-founder Jon Hilton is now the group’s product development and sales director, bringing unmatched experience of flywheel hybrid technology to the business. He also has a remarkable ability to deliver results quickly and effectively; the result of his background at the highest level of motorsport engineering. John’s stature within the automotive industry is underlined by his tenure as vice president of the UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
Flybrid’s technical director and co-founder, Doug Cross, is now our Chief Technical Officer. Doug has been responsible for driving some impressive technical innovations and is very much the quiet man who gets things done. We have integrated the new appointments into a matrix management structure with very strong technical leadership balancing the commercial focus.
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By GlobalDataIn what ways will the acquisition allow Torotrak to further develop your hybrid system?
Jon Hilton: The enlarged company can now provide three complementary technologies that address the growing market need for cleaner mobility without compromising performance or cost: traction drive transmissions, V-Charge variable drive superchargers, and now Flybrid’s award winning flywheel-based kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS).
The Flybrid technology is already benefitting from the complementary skills of Torotrak’s engineers who now work across the group in cross-functional teams. Torotrak is also working to establish lower-volume manufacturing for steel & carbon fibre flywheels at the Leyland site that will allow us to improve the robustness of our production processes and reduce costs as we move into fleet trials in buses later this year.
Jeremy, I guess this acquisition has changed your role too? What keeps you busy now?
JD: The main difference is that the acquisition and the integration of the businesses has placed greater demands on my own time for some months. Now that this is completed I’m looking forward to devoting myself once more to the main strategic issues for the Group. The one that challenges me most is stopping the frustrating ‘merry go round’ that can arise between a vehicle OEM that wants our technology and a first tier manufacturer that wants to make it. We’re doing everything we can to close that gap and find new ways to stimulate quicker decision-making.
As we move towards tougher emissions regulations based on real-world test cycles, vehicle manufacturers will have a double challenge: to meet the target without compromising driveability and cost, and to meet it under a new regime that doesn’t allow the leeway of ‘test optimisation’ that they have previously enjoyed. First Tier manufacturers have a great opportunity to step in here and be first to offer robust cost-effective solutions. My job is now focussed on helping them do this quickly and with minimal risk.
What are your predictions for the proportion of hybrid and EVs in Europe by 2020? And in North America?
JH: By 2020, I think we will see hybrids accounting for around 10 percent of worldwide sales, with EVs still below 5 percent, possibly just one percent, but clearly there will be substantial regional differences. If you move the timescale out further, to beyond 2030, the hybrid share could well be 50 percent of the market, with EVs at around 10 to 20 percent, but these won’t be the type of electric full hybrids that we see today. They are just too expensive, too heavy, and the batteries create too many environmental issues in their manufacture and disposal.
Whichever way you look at it, EVs remain expensive despite government grants being offered (such as in the UK) yet still give motorists range anxiety with just 100 miles between charges. How does your hybrid system compare to a battery based equivalent?
JH: It’s lighter, cheaper, more efficient and with none of the lifetime issues with batteries. When braking, it stores the kinetic energy of the vehicle directly as kinetic energy in a flywheel, so avoiding the conversion losses incurred in a battery hybrid which transforms the energy from kinetic to electrical then chemical, and back again. This efficiency advantage can be used to increase the range of an electric vehicle, or improve efficiency (or performance) in a more conventional powertrain.
Our system also allows significantly more energy to be recovered. One of the weaknesses of batteries is that they cannot harvest (i.e. collect) or return very large currents very quickly, which means that battery packs are typically much larger and heavier than they would otherwise need to be. Our system is completely scalable and has no practical limit to the rate at which energy can be recovered: hundreds of horsepower, if required.
What needs to happen to make electromobility affordable?
The remainder of this interview is available on just-auto’s QUBE Global light vehicle transmissions and clutches market- forecasts to 2030
