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Volvo Says It Will Only Make Electric and Hybrid Cars Starting in 2019 (npr.org)
Volvo has announced that starting in 2019, all of the new models it produces will be electric or hybrid. From a report: "This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car," said Hakan Samuelsson, Volvo president and chief executive, in a statement. "Volvo Cars has stated that it plans to have sold a total of 1 million electrified cars by 2025. When we said it we meant it. This is how we are going to do it." The move makes Volvo the first traditional automaker to set a date to phase out cars powered only by internal combustion engines, Reuters reports. The company said it will launch five fully electric cars between 2019 and 2021. Three of these will be Volvos, and two will be sold under the company's Polestar "electrified performance brand."
All automakers are going to more or less follow suit soon enough. The benefits of a mild hybrid system far outweigh the essentially nonexistent drawbacks, and if you actually convert the whole car to 48V, then there really are no drawbacks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I wasn't going to buy one of those pieces of crap, anyway, and now they won't even make the type of car that I would consider buying.
That's exactly why this is the right move for the kind of customer that Volvo is pursuing. Whether pursuing that kind of customer is a good idea or not is another issue. As far as I can tell, it's the middle class, and the middle class is shrinking. At least they finally figured out that they have to make their cars tall if they want to sell them.
Volvo is already selling a highly fancy-pants twincharged (super+turbo) engine with all the bells and whistles. They're fairly well-committed to taking the high-tech solution. But what do you have against hybrids? The Germans and the Koreans alike are now using it to make cars better first, and more efficient second. They still achieve significant efficiency gains, while also improving performance — sometimes by quite a lot, because the electric motor ideally complements the gasoline engine. The electric motor makes peak torque near stall, while the gasoline engine makes it much higher, especially if it is not turbocharged.
But let's say you have a tiny little engine, a big but cheap turbo, and a 48 volt lithium ion mild hybrid system. Your electric motor fills in down low to make up for the lack of torque in the engine, and for the long spool-up time on the turbocharger. The turbo comes on in the mid-range and continues to let the itty bitty engine make more power well into the high rpm/load range, as the electric motor fades away. How can that be a bad thing? The only reason you might [reasonably] complain is if it's mated to a CVT, but you can as easily use a DCT and get almost the same efficiency. Because you're doing torque fill with the electric motor, the clutches in the DCT will last essentially forever.
Automakers have to achieve mileage improvements both in specific segments, and also across their range. For the big guys who make vehicles in multiple segments, there's low-hanging fruit that they're already picking in weight reduction, Ford with Aluminum and GM with ultra high-strength steel. Dodge doesn't sell anywhere near as many pickups, and I'm not sure if FCA even has a plan there. For someone like Volvo, who only sells cars and unrelated heavy trucks into the USA, they have to literally get those mileage improvements across their range — that is, in all of their vehicles.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Boring electric vehicles that have almost no "top speed" and can accelerate faster than just about anything on the planet.
I have always suspected, and it's now being borne out, that being "into" fast cars was nothing to do with performance, or handling, or engineering. It was about making loud noises and getting dirty and feeling manly.
Now that every car on the road can do 130mph, nobody cares. Now that electric cars/bikes out-accelerate everything else, nobody cares. Now that even Harley Davidson have electric models, nobody cares.
It was never about the engineering. It was about making noise, and being seen to make noise.
Formula One is as boring as fuck, since they keep making silly rules to dial everything back to "safety". Noisy cars are boring as fuck, since every decent car is whisper silent and can out-perform all the others. Even convertibles - why on EARTH is it at all fashionable to show the world that you can't afford air-con and would rather have every bug smacking you in the face?
Fact is, the ICE's days are numbered. Environmental factors, cost, wear on parts, etc. Almost every car on the road is technically better than a Formula One car from my parent's generation. You can't really speed anyway because of the cameras, and even when you do, they are designed so that it doesn't actually feel fast at all (a dangerous combination).
How about we get over "WOAH! CARS ARE BIG AND LOUD AND NOISY AND LOOK AT ME COMING!", finally? Most kids these days have zero interest in cars, for the same reason they have zero interest in computers - the point are which they were "amazing" was in the previous generation. Now everything's a Formula 1, and you can't do anything with it.
My technician bought himself a brand new car last year. Was telling me all about specs, sporty wheels, such-and-such-a-limited-edition, etc. Spent a fortune. Turned out that, when we checked the specs, the car I had bought a few years before outperformed every spec he gave but didn't look like a terrible boy-racer tricked-out car from the 80's, could carry 5 and a ton of luggage, and was whisper-quiet internally.
Cars are no longer the must-have teenager item. They have Uber if they want to go somewhere. As such, those still clinging to that idea are clinging to a childhood, not to a fascination with engineering. We've been using sub-standard engines for decades because nobody "wanted" an electric car. Now that they do, they win on almost every metric.
P.S. I don't like electric cars, but because of practicality - purchase cost, replacement cost, range. My father was also a motor engineer for decades, built all his own tricked-out cars, did all kinds of stuff in his youth, massive garage dedicated to the hobby, etc. He bought a second-hand Volvo last year.
Cars are just utility vehicles now. And so the sporty ones make no sense. And a battery-powered Harley will beat just about anything away at the lights. Fact is, nobody really cares any more except the guy who bought the Harley because of the Harley name.