John Petersen
On June 27th Johnson Controls (
hosted their
Power Solutions Analyst Day and unveiled their expectations
for the future of stop-start idle elimination systems. After noting
that all automakers are developing a range of powertrains, JCI used
this graph to emphasize their view that the overwhelming bulk of
alternative powertrain vehicles over the next five years will have
simple, cost effective and fuel efficient stop-start systems.
You don’t see much about stop-start systems in the mainstream media
because politicians and reporters are too enchanted with plug-in
vehicles and other exotica to deal with mundane issues like purchase
prices and payback periods, but JCI has made it crystal clear that
its meat and potatos business over the next five years will be
cheap, not cool.
JCI’s estimates for market growth over the next ten years were
equally impressive, particularly when you realize that the advanced
energy storage systems required for stop-start generate twice the
per unit revenue and three times the per unit margins of flooded
lead-acid batteries. It’s a manufacturer’s dream come true, stable
unit volumes with rapidly increasing revenues and margins.
In their presentation JCI explained that the three key
attributes of energy storage systems for stop-start are:
- Cycling – reliable
system charge/recharge cycles over time; - Useable energy – range
of stored energy that can be used to optimize the system; and - Charge acceptance –
rate of recharge to maximize opportunity capture.
It ties perfectly to a
presentation from BMW and Ford at last fall’s European Lead
Battery Conference where the two automakers explained why the
stop-start duty cycle is so hard on conventional batteries. In a
normal vehicle, you start the engine at the beginning of the trip
and turn it off at the end. In a car equipped with stop-start, the
engine turns itself off automatically every time the car is stopped
and restarts automatically when the driver takes his foot off the
brake. While the difference between one start per trip and one start
per mile is enormous, a more critical problem arises from the fact
that stop-start systems require the battery to carry all accessory
loads during frequent engine off intervals.
In the segment of the BMW-Ford presentation that quantified a
typical stop-start duty cycle, the accessory load was 50 amps for 60
seconds, or about 3,000 amp seconds while the starter load was 300
amps for one second. In other words, the accessories accounted for a
whopping 91% of total load. Their graph of AGM battery performance
over time shows that charge acceptance (the downward curving blue
line) plummets as the battery ages while the time required to
recover from an engine off event (the upward curving red line) soars
from 30 seconds to three minutes or more.
Since all systems are designed to disable the stop-start
functionality until the battery has recovered an acceptable state of
charge, system efficiency falls off rapidly as the battery ages. The
automakers want and need something better than AGM batteries, the
principal solution that old line auto battery manufacturers like JCI
want to provide.
The first advanced technology introduced for stop-start systems was
developed by
AG in cooperation with Maxwell Technologies (
for use in diesel stop-start systems from Peugeot. In this dual
device configuration an AGM battery carries the accessory load and a
supercapacitor module carries most of the starter load. It insures a
reliable engine restart, but can’t do much about the bigger problem
of accessory loads. Contiental and Maxwell expect that their system
will be installed in up to a million Peugeot vehicles in the next
three years. If the system works well for Peugeot and stop-start
vehicle sales ramp as rapidly as JCI expects them to, implementation
rates will probably be higher.
A second advanced technology solution for stop-start systems is a
third generation lead-acid-carbon hybrid that’s being developed by
Axion Power International (
which hopes to begin a commercial roll-out of its PbC battery later
this year. In a joint
presentation by BMW and Axion at last fall’s ELBC, the
performance differences were obvious. The graph that tracked PbC’s
performance over time using the BMW-Ford test protocol showed that
charge acceptance (the flat blue line) stayed stable at 100 amps, or
twice the charge acceptance of a new AGM battery, while recovery
times (the flat black line) remained stable at 30 seconds.
The BMW-Ford graph shows that AGM batteries fade very rapidly over
the first 5,000 miles of use in a stop-start equipped vehicle. The
BMW-Axion graph shows that the PbC offers optimal performance
through 40,000 miles. In a recent presentation at the
Advanced Automotive Battery Conference in Mainz, Germany,
Axion unveiled an updated graph of follow-on testing through 80,000
cycles, or approximately eight years of use, with only modest
degradation.
I’ve been bullish about the future of stop-start idle elimination
technology for a couple years. If the JCI forecasts are even close
to accurate, I’ve been seriously understating the potential. Since
JCI is the largest lead-acid battery manufacturer in the world and
has a 36% share of the global automotive OEM and battery replacement
markets, it will undoubtedly be the biggest beneficiary of the rapid
worldwide implementation of stop-start idle elimination systems. The
second biggest beneficiary will probably be Exide Technologies (
which is emerging from several years of tough restructuring and
trades at a significant discount to JCI on a forward looking
earnings basis. Emerging technology developers like Maxwell and
Axion also have significant opportunities to grab a sizeable share
of what’s shaping up as $6 to $12 billion market niche. Their
respective market capitalizations are summarized below:
billion
million
million
million
As former Axion director, I’m all too aware that it’s a very little
fish in a very big pond. I also understand why the PbC’s extreme
cycling performance and charge acceptance can be crucial to the
future development of stop-start, a world-class fuel efficiency
technology that’s already being produced at scale and will become
dominant in this decade. It’s easy to dismiss my ramblings
because I have a large stake in Axion. It’s harder to dismiss BMW, a
first tier automaker that joined Axion as a co-presenter at last
year’s ELBC. It will be darned near impossible to dismiss a big
three US automaker that’s apparently signed on as an Axion
subcontractor in a pending DOE grant application.
Disclosure: Author is a
former director of Axion Power International (
and holds a substantial long position in its common stock.
