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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.
I hardly see it as that ambitious of a statement. They'll be introducing the new generation in 2026. A platform can last decades.
That said, of the major automakers, VW is the most ambitious regarding EVs. It'll be interesting to see how they translate their talk into action over the coming years; I'm watching them closely.
I was disappointed to find out recently that the Ionity network which was supposed be the first real competition with the Supercharger network in Europe is... I hesitate to call it a "fraud", so let's just call it "poorly advertised". They're billing it as a network of 350kW chargers, but what they're actually installing at present in most locations is just your typical high-end V1 CCS chargers (maxing out at 200A - and some people are claiming that it only supports ~400V charging, although I don't know if anyone has actually tested ~800V charging on it). The 500A V2 CCS charging is supposed to be a "modification at a later date". Basically more of the "okay, not today, but we'll be competitive tomorrow" stuff we've been getting from major automakers for the past decade.
To major automakers and infrastructure developers: I'm a big Tesla fan, but I don't want you guys pulling this sort of stuff. I want you guys to be competitive. Put up a fight, for Thor's sake, don't just talk about doing it "in the future"!
A recent survey found that 45% of current non-Tesla EV owners want their next EV to be a Tesla (I expect these numbers to apply to the "buying their first EV" crowd as well). This was celebrated as great news for Tesla. But it also means that there's 55% of non-Tesla owners out there who want their EV to be a non-Tesla brand. We need you guys to serve them. We're not even close to this being a zero-sum game; right now, and for the forseeable future, the game is "cannibalize the ICE market".
Make it happen. VW (and Porsche), you're my best bet on serving the non-Tesla crowd. Let's see it. :)
Seen on a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."
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