Very few automakers think Battery-Electric Vehicles (BEVs) aren’t the long-term future of the car industry. But the transition won’t happen overnight. Internal combustion technology will be needed for at least a decade more, and even longer in the developing world. Responding to this, Horse Powertrain, a Renault Group joint venture with Chinese firm Geely, has created a drop-in motor to convert an EV into a hybrid. Fortune talked to Horse Powertrain's CEO Matias Giannini at the Auto Shanghai 2025 car show to find out how the return of hybrids could help the transition to clean transportation.
“Horse Powertrain isn’t going in the opposite direction to the market,” says Giannini. “Everybody wants to go to Net Zero. BEVs are one path to get there. But even with the most optimistic numbers, maybe we get to 50% of the fleet by 2040 being fully battery electric vehicles. Horse Powertrain was born to ask the question that nobody else was asking, what do we do with the other half? We came into being to create new ways to get to Net Zero for the other 50%.”
