Over the next 20 years, the most important role for engine oils will be enabling auto manufacturers to achieve some of the incredibly challenging targets that are being put to them, Lubrizols Mike McCabe told a recent industry gathering.
McCabe, who is global market insights manager for the Wickliffe, Ohio-based additive company, gave his predictions for the coming two decades of automotive lubricants during Februarys ICIS World Base Oils & Lubricants Conference. The main factors that will drive change in lubricant use, he said, are vehicle sales, legislation, hardware, end users and the lubricants themselves.
Vehicle Sales
Growing vehicle ownership will spur sales of lubricants over the next five years, with Asian markets leading the pack, McCabe reminded attendees in London. In 2015, 75 million vehicles were sold globally (Figure 1, next page), a record that was achieved mostly thanks to Chinese buyers. This number should jump to 87 million a year by 2020, according to several sources he cited.
Just 15 years ago, more than three-quarters of yearly car sales were in North America, Western Europe and Japan, with the U.S. buying the most vehicles of any country (13.5 million). By the end of this decade, Lubrizol expects the United States 14.9 million vehicles sold to be eclipsed by Chinas 24 million. At that point, sales in China, India and Southeast Asia will equal those of mature markets. This is why its important that we focus on China and the opportunities that brings, McCabe emphasized.
The global vehicle parc will double from 1.2 billion units today to 2.4 billion by 2035, even as average vehicle age will continue to increase from the current 9.7 years in Europe and 11.4 years in Asia. Change does take time, and the penetration of new technologies can take a long time, he acknowledged. What can change that, though, is legislation and end-user preference.
As a result of these drivers, we are going to have a fleet that is predominantly designed around high levels of efficiency, said McCabe. Not quite half (45 percent) of todays worldwide parc is designed with advanced emissions control or improved efficiency. He estimated a dramatic jump to 80 percent within 20 years. Passenger cars with advanced controls will increase by a third, from 400 million to 1.2 billion. Commercial vehicles will see an even larger surge, from 200 million units now to 450 million then.
However, McCabe warned, we cant keep building roads for all these vehicles. He continued, Unless we can make more efficient use of the infrastructure we have, we wont see the growth in vehicle segments. Governments will need to ensure the best use of transport infrastructure by encouraging solutions like autonomous vehicles, on-highway truck convoys, efficient routing and variable fees for peak-time road use.
Legislation
Lawmakers focus for the automotive industry in the coming years will continue to center on improving efficiency, including ever-stricter emissions regulations. By 2020, nearly all countries will have advanced emissions controls in place.
Beijing continues to race ahead of the rest of China with its Beijing 6 tailpipe emissions standard, said McCabe. The U.S. will phase in Tier 3 emissions standards, and India will have Bharat Stage VI by 2021. Europe plans to migrate to the Real World Driving Efficiency test, an emissions performance test that is conducted on the road, and the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure will replace the longstanding New European Driving Cycle.
Carbon dioxide emissions will be the main change driver in the near term. The European Union will tighten CO2 limits to 95 grams per kilometer by 2021. The U.S. will mandate 54.5 miles per gallon fuel economy by 2025. China will have Phase III fuel economy legislation in place by 2020, which McCabe said will put their standards pretty close to those of North America and Europe. Brazil is also expected to have advanced emissions controls in place within five years.
All of these standards will lead to greater use of lighter viscosity lubricants with lower sulfated ash, phosphorus and sulfur (SAPS) additive levels, McCabe summarized.
Ten to 20 years from now, he predicted, CO2 emissions will continue as the main driver for change, but engine oil formulators will also have to work around more restrictions on chemical use.
Hardware
The coming five years will continue the trend of downsizing engines while increasing the amount of energy generated from the fuel thats consumed. New engines will run at lower RPM, producing more torque over speed, said McCabe, and will have more gears to optimize engine use at all times. He foresees a shift toward greater use of automatic transmissions worldwide.
Particulate filters, which are already in place for diesel engines, will be introduced for gasoline engines. Lubrizol also envisions greater use of selective catalytic reduction – advanced aftertreatment systems that reduce nitrous oxide emissions – on light duty diesel vehicles.
For us, all of these changes mean a harder environment for the lubricants to work in, McCabe pointed out. It also means that the lubricant has a much greater role to play in ensuring the engine works. With little change in ownership models in the near term, this underlines the responsibility of lubricant marketers to ensure consumers are using their products properly. Thats our role, he urged. We have to communicate to everybody what a lubricant does and what its role is. While in mature markets, the mechanics who perform most do-it-for-me oil changes can select the proper engine oil, in developing markets – especially Asia – manufacturers must communicate with end users who tend to make their own choices.
In the longer term, powertrain evolution will become increasingly complex as each OEM searches for its own solution to the emissions/efficiency/performance puzzle set before them. McCabe expects that light duty hybridization will result in smaller engines that, rather than being connected to wheels, will serve as the powerhouse for a battery. These variable load, very high power density engines will be challenging to lubricate, he mused. For heavy duty vehicles, the internal combustion engine will remain dominant, but with growing use of alternative fuels.
McCabe also foresees the globalization of vehicle platforms over the next 10 to 20 years – and with distinct regional challenges. As the same hardware comes into common use worldwide, he predicts that the industry will see new players enter the automotive game.
End Users
Lubrizol expects vehicle ownership to remain largely the same over the next five years, but the picture becomes more interesting when the horizon stretches to a decade or more. By 2030, the additive company envisions an ownership structure built around mobility services – that is, a shared economy of cars being used and moved around, McCabe expounded.
He hailed the dawn of contract services in place of car ownership. Rather than relying on the family hatchback to serve many purposes – commuting, hauling boxes, going for a Sunday outing – drivers will be able to select the vehicle that best fills their needs at a given time.
This structure will shift the burden of maintenance away from the individual to the fleet manager, increasing the use of professional installers for oil maintenance, said McCabe. Because of that, theres a good chance we might keep the right lubricants in the vehicle. But alongside that, the fleet owner will want to make the most of the assets that they own. They will be making sure they utilize the vehicles as much as possible, increasing annual mileage and up-time, and scrutinizing drain intervals.
With a far greater reliance on professional installers, the channels to market for passenger car motor oil will move away from independent workshops and shift further toward a business-to-business model, explained McCabe.
The Lubes
Lighter weight oils will continue to rule for new vehicles over the next five years, as all OEMs begin to recommend SAE 0W-XX engine oils with lower high temperature, high shear viscosity (Figure 2). The dropping HTHS requirements will be probably the biggest challenge for us, said McCabe. The market will also see the first low HTHS heavy duty engine oils – a huge change, he added.
For many OEMs, this will be the first time theyve moved to [low HTHS oils]; this will be uncharted territory. They will be concerned, and they will want proof of performance even greater than it is today, he cautioned.
Other challenges lubricant manufacturers will face include the shortening time span between specification upgrades and the increasing cost of developing new products. Lubrizol expects that stringent OEM specifications will severely tighten formulating freedom (Figure 3). Narrowing viscosity and volatility standards, for example, will confine the industry to an incredibly small window were trying to hit when we make these future lubricants.
We cannot sacrifice durability performance for an engine, and we have to deliver emissions performance and efficiency improvements, he fretted. New additive chemistries, McCabe continued, will be fundamental to achieving both.
Rather than the one-size-fits-all approach of today, lubricants two decades from now will be engineered as a component in the powertrain system, according to McCabe. As such, they will be more specific to each vehicle system and less interchangeable. Car and fleet owners will greatly value performance benefits from lubricants, making high-value oils the market focus.
Lubrizol anticipates that OEMs will come to define the minimum acceptable quality for lubricants in the coming decades – not just at factory fill, but throughout the service life of the vehicle. Evaluating engine oil performance will become even more difficult, as vehicle manufacturers demand a direct link to real-world performance.
With these challenges ahead, an integrated approach will be essential for the lubricant industry to thrive, McCabe stated. Every discipline in our industry will have to work together to make sure that we create these future lubricants and get them through to the market.