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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."
That's a bold statement to come from the world's largest car maker. Automotive development cycles are long. What if they get it wrong and EVs don't prove to be universally applicable; for example because some can't charge at their homes?
If I were in their shoes I would want to milk at least some ICE cars for the profit and to have a fallback plan. Wait until demand has fallen sufficiently for these legacy cars and then pull the plug.
Unless of course that is their plan and they simply won't be updating their platforms anymore but continue selling them for as long as possible. Sort of how the Crown Vic soldiered on with the same platform for a quarter century.
I just remember and old VW commercial advertising its clean desiel cars. And they were making fun of hybrids because they were less cool because they didn’t loud engine noise.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They also said their cars passed emissions tests. Why should we believe this?
I think cars should run on coal. It would be great. Jobs! -- Reginald Drumpf
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.
changes in Brazil.
Why do I bring this up? Because they said they are designing their last generation of ICE cars. That doesn't mean that generation won't last far into the foreseeable future, so long as the profits outweigh the manufacturing costs.
Really, if they were smart, they would be taking the old school VW platform, updating it with limited safety features, then replacing the gas tank up front with a LION pack, and putting a manually controlled electric motor in the back, minimizing cost and maintenance burden for customers. The entire third world with steady electrical access would be buying those cars. The pack location could make it easy to swap for long trips at service stations, and given the recent (current?) third party support for the external aspects of the vehicle, the only real changes would be inside of the frame to ensure the battery wouldn't rupture in all but the worst accidents, and that the driver and passengers would have adequate crumple zones to survive to whatever the current standard is. Done right they can continue selling new cars and even refurbishment frames for decades to come, while producing complicated luxury vehicles for the wealthier markets, supported by a steady sale of staple vehicles that would be lost risk and consistent profit.
As long as I can still get parts for the wife's Audi, I'm OK. She plans to live another 50 years and will not surrender the car. I will likely die before she is willing to give that up.
Gasoline still offers higher energy density and is rather safe.
It only recently battery technology is getting good enough. Mostly due to advancement needed for cellphones and laptops. While not always the same type of battery it means the money from the technology r&d went to side development of what can be a good automobile battery.
Now There is a problem where a business sector is becoming obsolete and there is more of an effort to keep it on life support vs having a migration plan. Because the fossil fuel industry has an other generation of work to be done.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Wouldn't the classic VW Beetle be a better example of a design with longevity, 60'ish years from about 1940 in Germany to about 2000 in Mexico? ;-)
Personally I wouldn't go so far as to say they won't be updating a platform, rather they won't be designing a brand new platform. Certainly incremental improvements to the platform would be made if appropriate. And certainly cosmetic and/or luxury and/or tech based changes can be made to the body and passenger cabin. I doubt their cars will be unchanged year to year to year.
Plus we are talking a timescale of decades so gasoline/diesel produced from biological sources (ex algae) may make these fuels carbon neutral. Its a bit silly to think such high density fuels are inherently petroleum based, that is merely the most cost effective production route at the moment. Scientific and engineering advances may very well change that.
of drone delivery in five years.
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.
The tech is far from perfected and it's only Just becoming usable in 2018
In other news: Microsoft announces that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows ever. We all know that has gone just swimmingly.
LION - safe to mine, safe to use, safe to eat.
And abundant at scale when all ICE passenger vehicles and commercial trucks are replaced with electric, all power plants renewable with battery backup, etc.
And sourced without any messy geopolitical issues.
... in the "decommissioning ICE" department. Much unlike some other German carmakers that wil get a huge kick in the balls in the next few years, loss 100 000+ high quality German industry jobs included. Our politicians deserve a clobbering for this bullshit, inlcuding sucking up to the auto-industry over here for so long, with the current Diesel scandal and all.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Sure electric cars are nice but they aren't free. They cost more for the people who wants to buy them. They could force everyone to buy one and do all kinds of policy but if the car is too costly it will stay costly no matter what. What do you think is happening in France. Gov may put incentive for bonuses when you buy an electric vehicule and put policies increase electric cars and reduce petrol cars but if the is too costly, poor people or people that cant afford it wont be able to buy it. Money doesn't grow on trees.
See previous comment. We still have steam locomotives in use as an another example.
Customers in the suburbs and rural areas have decent access to plugs. With a little infrastructure work, level 2 chargers could proliferate and this could be good for a lot of reasons.
For urban life where on-street parking is the norm, what are you gonna do? It's not like it's practical to deploy level 2 chargers (or anything else) along the sides of the road. Many of them are on the driver's side, which means those plugs would be subject to additional splashing and kick-up from passing road traffic. Additionally, those huge L2 plugs are now going to stick out an extra few inches. How do you do that without creating tripping hazards?
I'm all for increased electric car deployment. I was shopping hard for a pure electric car that would serve my needs, and failing that, a plug-in hybrid. My problem is that I need to go for trips with the Boy Scouts where I can tow a trailer over 1500 pounds (which drops all plug-in hybrids and I think only leaves the Model X for all-electrics) and those trips average 2-3 hours away (range is a problem). Stopping with a carload of boys to charge for 2 hours along the way is ... not going to sell cars.
VW (and the rest of the car makers) have a lot of work to do to overcome those challenges.
It is inevitable. The battery prices have been falling and have reached a tipping point. The battery pack cost estimate varies from 120 $/kWh to 150 $/kWh. (Battery cell prices range between 100 $./kWh to 130 $/kWh). The general consensus is when the battery pack costs 100 $/kWh the cost of electric power train (battery + motor + charger) will equal the cost of ICE power train (engine + transmission + emission control + gas tank). At that point BEV and ICEV will sell at the same price. BEV will cost three to five times less [FN1] compared to ICEV. At that point transition to BEV will be rapid.
People who have never driven BEV are misled by the lack of visible charging infrastructure compared to gas stations. Tesla super chargers few and far between. What they don't realize is every home, every electrical outlet is a gas station. Charging time does not matter. Cars sit idle all night long, enough time to charge. In fact BEV people feel ICEV fueling takes too much time, having to stop by at the gas station every week or so.
Also cars are the second most expensive thing bought by home owners, and the single most expensive thing bought by renters. When they see a big flux coming, things are unsettled, they post pone the decision to buy the next car. It will hurt ICEV companies a lot more than BEV companies.
But vehicles are just the beginning. There is no new breakthrough needed in batteries. The breakthrough needed is in manufacturing, industrial engineering, assembly lines for batteries, volume production, etc, all are known issues with known solutions. We know how to do this, we are just struggling to figure out how to finance this. When battery packs cost 80 $/kWh in 2022 all vehicles, from 18 wheelers to earth movers to train locomotives will run on batteries. Oil demand falling by 50% creating a glut and gasoline price falling to 1 $/gallon .. even that will not stem the tide. ICEV will be more expensive than battery. At 60 $/kWh we can store three days worth of electricity used by the entire grid in batteries. Solar and Wind will be enough and all the coal/gas/oil fired powerplants will go bust.
My friend works in a salt mine that ordered a 130 million dollar HVAC system because they are using diesel earth movers deep in the mine's confined spaces. In today's prices, you can buy 1 GWh of batteries, keep thm on 16 hour charge, 8 hour duty cycle, and run 40 earth movers, each using 500 HP motor operating 24/7. Only problem is 1 GWh of batteries is 2.5% of the world's battery making capacity! Look at the demand, look at the potential, the tipping point has been reached already. It is just a matter of ramping up the production volumes!
[FN1] BEV, Tesla model 3, 75 kWh for 310 miles, 1 kWh = 12 cents, 2.9 cents/mile. Compare to 250 HP BMW X3 25 mpg, 3 $/gal, 12 cents. Ratio = 4.1, plug in your numbers, ratio can down to 2.5 or go up to 6.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Many EU countries want to be CO2 neutral by 2050. Even in Germany, where the government is overprotective of the car industry, had a couple of setbacks, i.e., in more and more cities older diesel cars are no longer allowed to enter town, even a highway will get blocked. So there is a lot of pressure to go out of fossil fuels. If your home market is changing, you have to adapt.
"Full or partly electric" doesn't mean that all of their cars will be 100% battery-electric. Sounds like a mix of battery cars and plug-in hybrids (yes, powered by ICE engines when not charged from the mains).
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'm sure their customers, and those of other companies jumping on the EV bandwagon, will pay for it though.
The most amazing part of this post to me is that VW is still "working on... vehicles that aren't CO2 neutral." I had imagined that after the huge scandal VW was involved in that they would have taken this opportunity to switch over to electric for nearly 100% of their consumer based product lines.
Actually, there still is.... even in areas where electricity production is still dirty, an electric car will still "produce" about 3 tons less carbon pollution per year than an ICE vehicle itself would. While that savings might not be as significant in terms of its environmental impact in areas where energy production is coal based, it is still quite far from "nothing".... and would definitely add up quickly as electric cars become more common.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"does electricity make less CO2 overall?" Unless you concoct some horribly biased comparison scenario, yes. For your average car and your average grid, electric is a clear win in terms of CO2. Not by like order of magnitude or anything, but by a simple fact that bigger heat engines are generally more efficient. Power plants are really big heat engines in comparison to car engines. If you have reasonable amount of carbon free or neutral power on your grid it's an even bigger win.
I"m waiting for someone to have a heart attack or other serious medical emergency at home and their car isn't charged enough to make it to the hospital. It's going to happen. Life events aren't always so predictable that you can wait overnight for a charge. Let's hope VW makes a car that can charge in 20 minutes or less.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Q: Why is it incredibly irritating to start a comment in the Subject: line?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Once the volume of sales makes orthodox refuelling stations uneconomic, or their is more money to be made from recharging electric cars, it will become more and more difficult to find somewhere to refill the tank. After that there will be a tipping point, where it is simply too hard to keep a non-electric vehicle running.
Not only will the bottom fall out of the market, but the demand for electric vehicles will surge, since there will be no viable alternatives. This could all happen very quickly. Well before government target dates for the banning of new sales for non-electric cars.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Aside from California, very few states here in the USA have undertaken the effort of installing charging stations for electric cars. For most people, charging the cars at home is the only option. A few businesses have installed charging stations but those are few and far between.
For fully electric cars to be successful we will need at least half as many charging stations as they are gas stations. Who is going to build them? Is our electric grid up to the task of handling all that extra load?
So are all these automakers ignoring the market that doesn't want electric or self-driving cars? We are going to continue to act like people don't buy trucks and SUV's so much more than other vehicles? In addiction there have been so many studies that show EV are actually worse for the environment. We ignoring those too? We hear that they are doing so for the stock investors, but where have we ever seen it being a good business model to focus on things that don't sell? The best selling EV sells just barely over 8000 a year on good years, about 4000 in bad years. Compare that 890,000 plus trucks from Ford alone.
Instead of pumping it out of the ground, MAKE IT from the CO2 in the air using renewable (wind, solar, etc) power. This way we don't have to scrap the enormous fleet of ICE cars we already have in place. It would be a way to give us time to get to "near carbon neutral" using the infrastructure we already have in place!
EVs will need to have a full day of driving on a charge in order to be practical for most. No one wants to lose the ability to choose where they stop on a road trip and for how long.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I agree with you completely. I'd be very uncomfortable with a vehicle I couldn't have at full capacity within 20 minutes or so. I think EV proponents have very predicable lives but mine just isn't. There are unexpected emergencies and trips required from time to time.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Volkswagen had a very limited line of bro-trucks anyway.
Have gnu, will travel.
Gee, why are nitrogen oxide levels increasing?
From a company that lied to the entire planet....sorry, don't buy it, or any other VW / German diesel, don't care.
By 2022-3, if not sooner, EVs will be the large majority of car sales. Many car makers will see their sales plummet because they are not moving fast enough to EVs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
but idea of not being able to "charge" my car within 3 minutes is a problem.
Why?
The primary use for all cars is for commuting to work. That drive is, on average, less than 50 miles round-trip. The vehicles have >200 mile range when fully charged. So you do your commute and get home with 150 miles left in the batteries....and plug the car in.
In the morning, you're back at 200 miles.
With an EV, you don't stop at a "charge station" for a fill-up every other week. You plug it in every night.
Road trips? They're actually quite rare these days. The majority of drivers never do one. If they do, you either plan your breaks around meals and charging, or you rent an ICE vehicle, or if you do them regularly enough you don't buy an EV.
"But muh on-street parking!": If EVs take off as expected, chargers will be added all over the place because it would make money for the people who own the chargers. Much like gas stations were installed all over the place when gasoline cars took off.
You're right about the 'refill anxiety', but I'm not sure that your fuel efficiency will necessarily be just as good once the car ages 8 years as it was when all those seals and sensors were new.
Indeed. Even in areas where coal generates all of the electricity, a conventional automobile will put out roughly twice as much carbon pollution as is generated to charge an electric car to go the same distance.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
ICEs are a dying breed and rightly so, we clearly can't keep using them and using fossil fuels, and VW sees that and is responding accordingly.
You can say this is because they've screwed themselves in the diesel market, but consider this: they cheated because it's becoming impossible to meet fuel economy and pollution standards with ICEs.
>> if the tech doesn't get there on time, they won't happen.
The tech is already there since 10 Years.
Now, the scale is coming.
aaaaaaa
Having to go to a gas station to fill up is a problem for me.
You can replace any failed battery cells.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I'm assuming they'll be unreliable and break down a lot, as is par for the course with VWs? I can't figure out why anyone buys them: Everyone I know who's had one has had unending problems. Meanwhile, my boring toyota just keeps rolling.
I've got a friend who is on her second VW new Beetle. Someone said to her "Why are you buying another one? It's like some woman in an abusive relationship who just keeps coming back to get hit".
That's why i like the Volt. Charge away, but backup on gas if needed. Apparently GM doesn't agree with me.
One of the reputable tech questions YouTube channels did a comparison between gas and electric in several different ways. Using the standard USA grid distribution of renewable power sources, the break even for throwing out your gas car and all sources to build a brand new electric vehicle is about 4 years.
You can do that, but that process is going to be like 10% efficient. Even hydrogen fuel cells are only about 30% efficient fuel-to-wheel, and they have a 95% efficient motor. All electric vehicles are about 70% fuel-to-wheel efficient.
... the ICE in that time frame. I'm not so sure about batteries being able to store the needed energy.
My bet at the moment is electric vehicles with fuel cells for people who have long range requirements, and batteries only for people in a urban setting that usually don't drive much and have a charging infrastructure in place.
The most recent study I read says that an EV in West Virginia (which gets almost 100% of it's electricity from coal) is on a level with a Prius for CO2 emissions. Everywhere else it's as good or better than the best of the hybrids, and much better than an ICE.
...not everyone who buys a car is a metro urban hipster that lives 5km from work in a benign climate. And here's the money-shot: those people are abandoning cars anyway.
I commonly (several times a month) make 300+ mile road trips, I don't have the time to park for HOURS at a charging station waiting for that range to be restored.
I live in a place that regularly sees -40C/F every winter. My GARAGE commonly sits at ambient temps of 0F/-15C.
I drive an SUV because I quite commonly have to help move furniture, yard waste, fireplace wood, animals, and tow trailers up to 2000lbs for Boy Scout campouts.
I love the idea of an electric vehicle generally. I'd love to have a Tesla not just because they're electric but because they're fucking-well-designed cars. But until their "fill up process" means automated swapping of charge packs so I can "fill up" in a few minutes, you guys can keep your EVs.
-Styopa
I have a Volt (and a Tesla) and I agree that a PHEV, especially one like the Volt with 40-50 miles of electric range is a great way to ease into EV for many people.
I hope GM is planning on using the Volt powertrain to produce a crossover PHEV. Not sure, I know they said their future is BEV, but I think for the next decade a lot of people will want the insurance of having the gas engine for backup.
EVs will need to have a full day of driving on a charge in order to be practical for most. No one wants to lose the ability to choose where they stop on a road trip and for how long.
Really? A full day of driving for the required range? When was the last time you drove for an entire day? How often do you drive for a full day? How often do 'most people' drive for a full day?
Casting my mind back, the last time I drove for 'a full day' was in 2000, when I was moving ~1000 miles away and drove my car rather than having it shipped. A full day's driving has occurred maybe a dozen or two times in 30 years of driving - I seriously doubt that 'most' people will need 500+miles of charge before an EV becomes practical.
Heck, 100 miles per charge would see me through ~99% of use cases, so make it 200 miles per charge and that's a lot of safety buffer.
We always drive for a full day. Pack a cooler, eat on the road. 8 hours later and a couple gas stops and we're at our hotel. We don't spend money on restaurants, it's just not something we want to do.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You guys are so inconsistent. If you support fossil fuel generation, you should support fossil fuel power plants, which are typically located in the countryside. If you don't support fossil fuel generation, then you should be encouraging renewables and BEVs and raging against Trump.
their gasoline engines have been complete rubbish lately, with massive oil consumption problems and other issues. so much so, that i don't want to deal with any VAG brand ever again (enough is enough).
let's hope their electrical drive trains will be much mor reliable.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
For that matter, there is nothing standing between us and cheap, long-lasting batteries other than some science and engineering? Or does it not work both ways?
It does work both ways. However in certain situations the energy density of liquid fuels is advantageous. There is no universal solution, only one tool better for a particular job. If the sourcing of these liquid fuels could get to at least carbon neutral then ICE, jets, etc will have their particular niche jobs.