Ethical Dilemmas Encountered in Engineering Hybrid Electrical Vehicles

For the past 10 years, I have been working as an electrical engineer for Helixx, a recently established car-manufacturing company, on hybrid electric vehicles. The current project is a P2 hybrid, an expansion on the power-split hybrid model that could “provide 95 percent of the fuel efficiency benefits of an expensive two-motor system, like the one in the Toyota Prius, [a power-split hybrid], but at cost reductions of onethird or more” [1]. The P2 hybrid operates on a parallel twoclutch system to disconnect and reconnect the transmission from an engine and electric motor unlike the power-split hybrid, but it would still deliver the drastic drop in emission rates that a power-split hybrid would offer. In exchange for putting one of these P2 hybrid vehicles on the market by the fourth quarter of 2028 with the stated 95 percent increase in fuel efficiency and maintaining of the power-split hybrid’s low emissions rates, the US government is offering to give Helixx a non-negotiable subsidy of $50,000 per vehicle. However, it is already past halfway through 2028 and laboratory tests of the P2 hybrid have failed to achieve the goal of 95 percent increased fuel efficiency. Helixx plans to release the hybrid to the market on-schedule, regardless of testing results, but this is in conflict with several tenets of engineering codes of ethics as provided by the National Society of Professional Engineers as well as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.