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VW Says the Next Generation of Combustion Cars Will Be Its Last (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Volkswagen AG expects the era of the combustion car to fade away after it rolls out its next-generation gasoline and diesel cars beginning in 2026. "Our colleagues are working on the last platform for vehicles that aren't CO2 neutral," Michael Jost, strategy chief for Volkswagen's namesake brand, said Tuesday at an industry conference near the company's headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. "We're gradually fading out combustion engines to the absolute minimum."
The world's largest automaker has started to introduce its first wave of electric cars, including next year's Porsche Taycan. The rollout across its stable of 12 automotive brands is forecast to comprise about 15 million vehicles, as the company earmarks $50 billion over the next five years to spend on its transformation to self-driving, electric cars. Production of the VW brand's I.D. Neo hatchback will start in 12 months in Germany, followed by other models from the I.D. line assembled at two sites in China as of 2020. VW plans to launch fully or partly electric versions across its lineup of more than 300 cars, vans, trucks and motorbikes by 2030. The company "will continue to modify its combustion engine technology after the new platform is introduced next decade," reports Bloomberg. "After 2050, there may still be some gasoline and diesel models in regions where there is insufficient charging infrastructure, according to Jost."
The world's largest automaker has started to introduce its first wave of electric cars, including next year's Porsche Taycan. The rollout across its stable of 12 automotive brands is forecast to comprise about 15 million vehicles, as the company earmarks $50 billion over the next five years to spend on its transformation to self-driving, electric cars. Production of the VW brand's I.D. Neo hatchback will start in 12 months in Germany, followed by other models from the I.D. line assembled at two sites in China as of 2020. VW plans to launch fully or partly electric versions across its lineup of more than 300 cars, vans, trucks and motorbikes by 2030. The company "will continue to modify its combustion engine technology after the new platform is introduced next decade," reports Bloomberg. "After 2050, there may still be some gasoline and diesel models in regions where there is insufficient charging infrastructure, according to Jost."
The interesting thing is that this is not going to be because of the whole 'green' thing. Sure for some people that is important, and it is a nice add on, but if people really cared about that they would buy city cars instead of trucks or luxury sedans.
No, the reason this is going to happen is because they are better products. I live in a central city area, and after 5 years being carless am looking at buying a second hand car for work. I fix my own cars, but don't have the time to do that anymore. It is extremely annoying having to deal with timing belt changes (thankfully not so common now), potentially expensive emission control problems, changing spark plugs, water pumps, flushing coolant, engine oil every 6 months. As they get older (~100km for many modern cars) you have a whole bunch of gotchas that will empty your pocket. On one model of Nissan/Renault (would never buy) a friend had the direct injectors fail. They basically had to strip the head to fix it, and it was half the value of the car to fix. That's just incredible. Gas cars also have incredibly complicated transmissions and these can cause problems.
With an electric car you don't have to do any of these issues. You just charge and go. You don't even need to change the brake pads these days. And depending on your housing situation, not having to go to a petrol station and having a fully filled car every morning is a positive not a negative.
The other thing is that the cost of these things is going to keep going down. I see another trend on the horizon which will be battery replacements. I expect that once there are enough old electric cars with poor batteries, someone will start making replacement packs enmass. These will be cheap (as batteries have gotten cheaper) or have better capacity. So you can probably keep the same car for much longer and just keep changing the tyres and upgrading the pack as required.
Outside those with the money to burn, most people just want a car that is reliable and cheap to maintain. Electric cars will do that for them, and for that reason alone nobody will want to touch a thousands-of-things-can-go-wrong gas car once the cost becomes competitive.
You can get vroom vroom from speakers. Seriously, EVs will probably be required to make some noise as a safety feature for pedestrians and cyclists at some point. Especially at low speed, parking lots, crosswalks, etc.
a very bad day the next.
No worse than running your battery out, finding a flat tire, car won't start, etc. People who drive already have a backup plan - for me it's a call to AAA and an Uber. I drive cars into the ground so I'm pretty good at this by now. "Forgetting to charge" has a pretty stiff feedback loop, so I don't think it will be that frequent. Like "forgetting to fill up", which happened to me once - after a 3 mile walk with a gas can I remembered not to do that again.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Of course things are won:
1. Powerplants can have better scrubbers and run more efficiently than cars, because they're much larger and the load is more predictable.
2. You shift particulate and other emissions out of urban centres
#2 alone is worth its weight in gold. I went to the University of Cambridge. The old buildings there had to have their stone washed down on a regular basis to clean off the soot from vehicles. If that soot were all shifted to the stacks of powerpoints, that would be great
I can buy a Honda Accord new at $30K Canadian and buy another $30K of gas before I'm at your price point. That would probably take me the lifetime of the car.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why wouldn't it be? The fun of a motorcycle is the open road, feeling the wind, the speed and the power. What tech the bike uses to go forward doesn't matter so long as it goes.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
While CO2 is wreaking havoc on the planet's climate, it is still a small fraction of air, around 500 ppm, and is chemically inert (well, it's a combustion product, so obviously...). Extracting CO2 from the air is very difficult. You can use current technology with biofuels, though these are obtained by fermentation and have a short shelf life. For example, biodiesel is OK for city buses because they run around regularly, but if you fill your diesel car with biodiesel and park it at the airport for 2 weeks while on holiday, you may find a nasty surprise when you try to start it again and the fuel has precipitated solids.
The infrastructure for EVs is way more pervasive than fossil fuels today. I am en EV owner (Nissan Leaf) and I almost never need to use fast charging: overnight charging at 2 kW covers over 95% of my needs. Just connect it in the evening and it will be ready the day after. Fast chargers are a necessity for longer travels, but charging at home is a whole lot cheaper.
And since I often hear the argument "but what if everyone charges their car at the same time?", well that just does not happen. The grid would collapse also if everyone started their washing machines at the same time, but that does not happen. Sure, the grid will need some strengthening here and there, but there is plenty of time to do it, consumers are not going to buy EVs all at the same time.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y