Internal Combustion Engine Development
 

This is one of the better summaries of the auto production industry's plans for the ramp up of software, electric motors and batteries and the demise of gasoline/diesel engines. The expertise of the engine designers is being lost to retirements.

"Gas Engines, and the People Behind Them, Are Cast Aside for Electric Vehicles" Wall Street Journal 7/23/21

https://archive.vn/AXoiD#selection-833.2-833.72

OTOH we come from a time that is a peak of gasoline engine development. For a street engine is hard to do better than a Pentastar/EcoBoost/High Feature engine. All in the 3-4 liter, DOHC, VVT, 24 valve 6 range of around 300 hp with a 4,000 rpm torque band that run on almost anything. Perfect for a 3-4,000 lb street car. (lotsa math going back over 50 years behind that statement).

Those are going to be around for a long time unless prohibited.

This is a problem all across industry. Bean counters and management dazzlers are big on "what we need right now" hiring practices and expect that they can get an expert to come work for their sh$(*y company for peanuts on a contract basis for 3-6 months at a time. As one of those "almost experts" in my field I see the older generation retiring and leaving and management not keeping any of their skills or design notes around.

As for the engines... it's hard to argue against them when they move a car around decently with nice power and can get nearly 30-35MPG.

Disel-powered electric Traction cars sound good to me.

Start stock piling parts.

If you ever wondered what it felt like around 1915-1925, when the rugged and reliable horse was being "put out to pasture" by these noisy, complicated, mechanical contraptions, bent on the destruction of transportation as we know it. You have idea of how the horseman, stall keepers, blacksmiths, buggy whip manufacturers, saddle manufacturers and buggy factories must have felt. Not saying I like it, but it's here and more and more of them are being built and sold every day. I see on average 4-5 Tesla's every day now. A year ago, it was one a month. Hopefully, they can all get along on the road together for several decades because a super rapid deployment of only electric vehicles will wreck the economy and crash the existing electric grid. They can't keep up now with current demand, add 10 million electric vehicles a year and see how that all plays out.

You are a train guy, I knew it!

And when the emergency charging vehicle shows up with a Generator powered by Diesel, all will come full circle

Florida has black/brown outs now.

Billions and Billions of dollars of infrastructure updates and changes over a couple of decades will be necessary to remove IC engines. So we still have some time.

Hurricane, forest fire, earthquake ... during an evacuation the gas vehicles are going to be driving around all the electric vehicles that crashed the grid charging up to get out of town.

But who knows, battery innovations happen every month, at some point the power density and charge time will catch up to gas. Still .... going to be a tough problem to solve a million people panic charging their vehicles at the same moment. A gas pump delivers way more energy, way faster and can be run with a generator.

The future will sort itself out and at 80 I'm probably not going to care much about what makes my car go ... if I even still drive :)

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out but for sure the change is coming sooner than I would have expected.

Don't worry about it, they aren't sufficient resources available to make enough batteries for cars. Even with the low number of EVs being produced today car manafacturers have had to pause or stop EV making because of battery supply problems.

In 2020 approx 1.2 million EVs were made out of 78 million cars in total.. Electric cars are never going to be a realistic option.

Battery innovations will NEVER reach Gasoline energy density.

Small Nuclear power sources can do it, if allowed. But will never be production items to just anybody.

Direct-injection Hydrogen has promise for classic Combustion Engines.

The coal and natural gas powered car industry (some people call them electric) would not exist without billions of dollars of subsidies directly to the manufacturers and consumer incentives. Plus nobody ever talks about the environmental impact of the massive mining operations required to get the minerals needed to make the batteries, and environmental impact of battery production and all the carbon emissions related to those activities. And in the end 70-80% of the electricity to power them comes from coal and natural gas anyway. Smoke and mirrors.

My brother in AZ has lived solar for three decades and I have optimism and open mind about the role electric will play in our energy future.

Can see some limited usage of electric vehicles for light vehicle fleets in urban areas, and also for uber/lyft type of operations in urban areas. Everywhere? Nope. Look up Proterra buses, for an apparent horror show in an attempt to electrify bus fleets. It is smoke and mirrors, trading tail pipe emissions for smoke stack emissions.

And .... don't discount improvements in the efficiency of IC engines, or alternate fuel IC engines.
I see a lot of auto manufacturers making claims they will be all electric by 2030 or similar. Consider the tiny market share EV's have right now, and the total inability of the electric infrastructure to support say even 20% EVs right now, I think they are blowing smoke to mollify the tree huggers at the moment. Auto companies are notorious for making claims about what they are going to do in the future that rapidly change depending on market forces.

Exhaust-powered (brushless) generators. ought to charge and powerthe electric cars.

Who is, John Galt... ?



Frank

I was glad to be able to pull out and pass the Tesla on I-71 last Friday that was doing 40mph while the driver was intently staring bug-eyed at the dash. Some lessons must be hard.