I suspect in 20-30 years time, young people will view ICE cars in much the same way we viewed external combustion engine vehicles when I was a youth - quaint relics from a bygone era.

 

not guaranteed. There will be some electric penetration, but the science and math states that it is not sustainable outside of local use vehicles which could be a very useful tool. That little electric grid and generation capacity thing. Several former clients, now friends, are in the electrical generation and transmission industry, and i see it myself. There is a steady backpedaling from the electric push as certain US States such as CA realize that they import a massive amount of their necessary electrical usage and already have problems with system capacity without electric vehicles. As for some great effort to increase electrical generation and storage, two issues: the politics of doing what works and the reality that so-called sustainable are not. There is a tremendous amount of hydrocarbon fuel in gas and liquid form on the earth and here in the states and even solid mass fuel that can be converted to liquid. We are not going to abandon these resources for hundreds of years. And there are old technologies that convert solid hydrocarbon to liquid using the energy from other concentrated sources such as nuclear. All solid, liquid or gaseous hydrocarbon fuel is a battery that does not carry its own oxidizer. There are efficiencies there that will not be abandoned even if we have to make the liquid fuel. Cars since the 90s in regulated markets burn so clean that they oftentimes clean the air and do not pollute to any degree. Diesels are being brought up to speed even with the growing pains.

We are going to have a fleet of gasoline cars for a long, long time.

 

Given that EVs already exist and can cross the US from ocean to ocean without difficulty, the science and maths really aren't with your argument.

 

give me a few billion dollars and i can go to the moon. It does not mean that it is efficient for the mass market or makes sense. I am not diminishing the accomplishment of a technology. Right now such EVs are subsidized, niche, enthusiast vehicles. We do not have the capacity for them at even 5% market penetration. People using them are not paying the costs of acquisition or electrical infrastructure. A particular company is a tax credit farm that allows manufacturers to buy credits for not meeting fuel efficiency in their fleets. Remember that any technology that advances options or creates new ones is recognized in a free market without games or subsidy from day one. And, i freely admit that local use EVs which can achieve ranges suitable for two or three days of commuting with affordably and sustainably replaceable battery packs are possible, desirable and needed. We are not getting these due to the fact that we are subsidizing something that does not make sense standing on its own. In other words, we are cutting butter with a chainsaw.

What would you rather own for an EV runabout, a car that can easily handle two days of the average commute or shopping, is a small SUV or common minivan with a more standard rechargeable battery pack that is not an environmental disaster to make or dispose of, but can be replaced and recycled at a cost which does not require junking the vehicle or a new purchase. Or would you prefer a massively expensive vehicle with a commensurately expensive battery that once no longer useful makes replacing the entire vehicle necessary. This same battery has a massive environmental cost. Many people keep older vehicles for economic reasons and even purchase them; what about these folks? Yes, as technology refines itself, costs come down, but there are hard limits, especially but not limited to environmental, with the long-range battery packs. I have seen first-hand how first-world technology outsourcing has poisoned other areas of the earth and the peoples there. This is a brutal crime against humanity. BTW there are always losses with electricity transmission and generation. Oxidizing a fuel as close as possible to use is always more efficient.

The problem is that Americans and other first-world peoples wanting technology get to live far away from where it and often the energy that they need is produced. The EV future looks bright and clean to the community that desires it and does not live with the pollution and environmental destruction. Note that many are figuring this out. This is a sin that we first-worlders will pay for one day.

 

I can’t wait until we are a Kardashev type II civilization that harnesses solar energy with a Dyson sphere. Of course by then, cars will have been obsolete, which is a sad thought.

 

No need to wait - renewable energy already outstripped fossils last year in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/business...for-first-time

 

As impressive as that is, that is still a long way from being a Kardashev type 2 civilization, which is a civilization that can harness 100% of the energy of its star. One of the proposed methods is by using a Dyson sphere or a swarm. The sphere would be a giant solar panel shaped like a sphere that would completely encircle the sun to capture its energy. The swarm on the other hand, is composed of trillions of individual solar panels orbiting the sun. It is theorized that when we are able to harness all of the energy of the sun, we should be capable of interstellar travel.


Yes, I'm a nerd.

 

The market does not always follow the math and EVs have yet to make a significant impact in terms of market penetration, despite being available nationwide for well over a decade. Most Americans are moving away from fuel efficient vehicles to less efficient trucks and SUVs. Ford is even talking about selling no cars at all any more.

And the market is doing this despite the fact trucks and SUVs are more expensive to buy and more expensive to maintain than other vehicles on the road, including even other ICE vehicles. The market right now is not following the math. At the end of 2019 there were about 1 million electric vehicles on the road in the US, that is every electric vehicle ever sold here that hasn't went to the scrap yard .... there were also about 1 million brand new Ford F150 pickups sold in the US in 2019. So in a single year we put as many new F150s on the road as we have all electric vehicles combined up to that time. And that is just one model.

Things could change and I think the number of EVs sold will continue to increase as more options are offered, but I don't think that is the direction the majority of the American market is moving in terms of volume and I think the number of ICE SUVs and Trucks sold will continue to increase at a greater rate than the number of EVs sold. EVs might replace the ICE sedan, but by the time that happens cars will only account for about 10% of new vehicle sales and trucks and SUVs will be be the other 90%.

 

No they haven't outstripped fossil fuels for energy, only for generating electricity. The article only refers to fossil fuels and renewables used for generating electricity which means little in the UK since almost no houses there use electric heat, and few use electric ranges. Over 91% of hoses in the UK still use a natural gas boiler for heat and I bet most of the other 9% are oil burners. Most houses there have gas ranges too. So in terms of electricity they are mostly renewable, but in terms of energy, the UK is still very, very reliant on fossil fuels. They are just burning fossil fuels at their house instead of burning them at the power plant.

If this happened in the southeast US where a lot of homes are all electric it would be a big deal, but not so much in the UK.

 

"Only for generating electricity" - but that is what we are talking about, generating electricty to recharge EVs. Other than local air quality benefits and possibly efficiency benefits, there isn't a huge amount of point in switching from an oil powered vehicle, to an electric vehicle that gets its power generation from fossil fuels. So yes, the UK being able to get more than 50% of its electricity from renewables is an important landmark.

And as for SUVs and trucks, you know that Tesla makes an SUV and has a truck in the pipeline? I would guess that for the majority of people who see cars as an A to B machine, they really don't care what fuel it runs on and will just buy on price, performance and running costs.

 

Twenty years ago I thought hydrogen fuel cells would be the dominant automotive energy source by now. Perhaps I'll give that theory another twenty years....

 

Hydrogen cars exist of course, but the fuel is so expensive the manufacturers include it free. Unless the cost of hydrogen falls significantly, they aren't viable.

 

Yes I know, Ford, Jaguar and maybe others also have electric SUVs as well. Those are not what is selling though. Tesla sold 20,000 Model X's in 2019, Toyota sold 450,000 RAV 4s and there were another 25 or so SUV models that sold over 100,000 units. Some of these models actually came to market after the Model X, meaning their sales grew from 0 to more than 5 times Tesla's electric SUV.

The problem with the theory is the majority of people who make a NEW automobile purchase absolutely do buy not automobiles as an A to B machine. By any objective measure the Ford F150 is one of the worst A to B machines you can buy. There are hundreds of better options a available in terms of purchase cost, emissions, fuel, maintanance, cost/ease of parking, ease of driving, comfort and reliability. This includes numerous electric and non-electric vehicles that are better A to B options. Yet the F-150 outsells them all by a wide margin. The vehicles closest to the F150 holding the top 4 places are all very poor A to B choices as well. This clearly shows that transportation from A to B is not a primary purchase consideration for Americans buying new cars.

If you are considering the second hand used market there may be a substantial number of low-income people who do base purchase decisions heavily on A to B transportation. I am not positive that is the case, but I could find it believable. However auto manufacturers don't build or sell cars to those people. They can only choose from what others have purchased years before. In that respect, they won't move the market in terms of what is built.

 

Well Hagerty "officially" considers my 2001 XK8 as a "classic" cause they insured it as such. By limiting the miles driven per year and the stated value for total loss, (due to other "appliance" vehicles owned), I was able to insure the XK8 for a paltry $192 per year including full collision and comprehensive coverage. Hard to beat.

 

Of course the RAV 4 outsells the Model X - it's a fraction of the price and a lot slower. The base Model X does 0-60 in the same time as my XKR and the performance versions are even quicker.

With mass market manufacturers like VW entering the EV market with direct competitors to the RAV 4 next year, I'm sure we'll see huge increases in volumes, never mind what is going to be happening in 20-30 years time.

With such huge changes in the car market, it really doesn't make sense to say that what happened over the past few decades is any kind of guide as to what will happen over the next few, but the writing is on the wall for ICE vehicles and it seems incredibly optimistic to think this won't have a long term impact on our V8 powered vehicles.

 

Huge increases compared to current EV sales yes, huge increases compared to current ICE truck and SUV sales no, not even close.

There were over 12 million trucks and SUVs sold in the US last year. I am guessing less than 50k of those were electric, led by the Model X. We will probably see that number quadrouple over the next 2 or 3 years with many new cheaper electric models, including the model Y, coming on line. But that is still a small number compared to overall truck and SUV sales. Let's go crazy and say electric truck and SUV sales increase 10-fold by 2024 (1000% increase). Even in that crazy scenario, you are talking about 500,000 electric SUV sales per year which is less than 5% of the American SUV and Truck market.

Here are the real numbers - industry estimates indicate there will be about 20 million electric vehicles on the road in the US in 2030. I think that is a bit optimistic, but even if it is true, that is 20 million out of a total of about 300 million registered vehicles. That would mean 7% of the vehicles on the road in the US will be electric in 2030 and the other 93% will use ICEs.

To be clear I am focused on the American market and I am talking about ICE vehicles, not V8s specifically. Worldwide what you are talking about may come to pass, but in the USA all the data and the purchase decisions of American consumers indicate otherwise. When you look at current American buying trends - inefficient gas guzzlers, large and as you noted slow, it is hard to see what trait would drive Americans in masse to buy electric even if prices were comparable. What do electric vehicles offer that the mass market American new automobile buyer is looking for?

 

I'm not sure where this piece of info came from, but I recently heard that there are more F150s sold "each year" than the total of all EVs in existence.

Yeh - ICE vehicles are going to be our mainstay for a long time. EVs are cute. Owning one gives a certain group of people a warm-fuzzy. Their positive impact on the planet is grossly overstated. And their negatives are never discussed.

That said, my wife and I might be considering adding an I-Pace or eTron in a year or two because they would compliment the low mileage, daily driving we typically do, ... and they're pretty damn quick too. The i-Pace is faster to 60 than both my XKR and 360F1!!! - lol. The eTron is almost as quick as the wife's 30T F-Pace R Sport. But EVs have a long, long way to go, before I'd have a garage without an ICE car in it.

 

Need to be careful about what this means. For example, Drax Power has converted coal plants to 'renewable biomass'. This and biodiesel is about 10% of UK generation. To be clear, this 'biomass' is wood pellets from the US. Between anthracite (hard coal), natural gas, nuclear, or wood, the only thing US wood has going for it is the vacuous word 'renewable'. Biodiesel CO2 intensity is similar to natural gas for almost every source (rapeseed, soy, etc) except waste which is a small stream. This capacity will be necessary, absent some cheap industrial scale storage, to stabilize the grid on out.

The UK is also importing about 6% of its electricity a year from France (lower CO2 generation, but nuclear), the Netherlands (higher CO2 generation), and Ireland (higher CO2 generation). So, up to 16% electrical generation caused by putting CO2 in the air (or generating nuclear waste) in the UK has been offset by hiding it in another column.

California has an even more extreme example of this. Patting themselves on the back for their virtue while importing over 30% of their electricity from out of state that allows them to stabilize their highly unstable grid and to continue making their grid ever more unreliable with choices that make little sense when real tradeoffs are assessed.

The main thing that concerns me is idiotic decisions not based on assessing tradeoffs that have long lead times so that their impact will not be felt before it's too late (e.g. the UK decision to restrict/eliminate sales of petrol/diesel cars, etc, when the current market penetration is very very low, current UK electric vehicles are about 136K total pure EV out of >30,000K passenger vehicle stock).

For my part, back to petrol cars and keeping XK8s on the road...

 

An obvious design link can be seen between the XKs and the new Ferrari Roma and all the Aston Martins. They're all beautiful, but to me none are any more beautiful than the other, so I'll stick with my XKR.

 

I think the prices will be creeping up soon