Fuel economy concerns will drive lube oil preferences

Over the last few years, the excitement over reducing fuel consumption and pollution through alternative powertrain vehicles has given way to a renewed enthusiasm over cutting out gasoline and diesel usage in conventional engines.

The race to make our cars more fuel efficient is expected to reach fever pitch in the short and medium terms, given the Obama administration’s new mandate toward achieving 54.5 mpg for cars and light trucks by model year 2025.  

Beyond electric vehicles and hybrids, automakers are already using various new techniques in conventional engines in an effort to paint them with a deeper shade of green, and also to achieve the 35.5 mpg mandate for model years 2011-2016.

Lightweight materials, gasoline direct injection (GDI) and turbocharging are some of the methods being actively employed in today’s vehicles.

For instance, Volkswagen is planning to phase out all of its naturally aspirated engines for the U.S. market by 2015, opting for various turbocharged options in their vehicles.

Similarly, Ford recently announced that it has now produced two million of its turbocharged EcoBoost engines since their introduction in 2009.  The Detroit automaker is also poised to unveil a one-liter engine in its 2014 Fiesta models.

Japanese and other European automakers, who have already started adopting these technologies in their own regions, are expected to begin introducing them to North America, given the tightening fuel economy environment.

Frost & Sullivan estimates that turbocharger-paired GDI penetration will increase rapidly between 2016 and 2020, leading to about 70-75 percent penetration in new vehicle production by the end of that period.

Similarly, engines less than 1.5-liter in displacement – currently a non-existing segment in North America – will witness some uptake, accounting for 6 percent to10 percent of total production by 2020.

The push towards downsized and turbocharged engines will not only come from OEMs. Frost & Sullivan’s customer research shows that these fuel efficiency techniques are most favored by potential vehicle buyers.

However, such modes of downsizing engines and improving fuel economy also creates technical challenges, which can be partially addressed by the effective use and replacement of lube oil, leading to increased demand for certain higher grades of these chemicals – such as low viscosity oils – in the aftermarket. 

For instance, the steel timing chain in GDI engines can suffer significant wear. Moreover, these types of engines can cause high oxidation of lube oils, leading to faster degradation of these essential chemicals.

Several leading lube oil and additive suppliers are already working on developing new and upgraded varieties of these chemicals that will address some of these challenges. If these new variants are used as factory fill, significant demand will be created in the aftermarket when these vehicles undergo regular maintenance.

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