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Why the Internal Combustion Engine Is the Future
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Why the Internal Combustion Engine Is the Future
Internal combustion engines have a long future, despite the prominence of battery electric vehicles (EVs).
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I know JKav is the resident "automobile purist" on staff, so I understand why he was tasked with writing this article, because it is, afterall, how he feels. I get it.
With that said, there is one very glaring omission in the article, the Chevrolet Volt. It has all of the benefits of the good 'ol ICE and all the benefits of the dreaded EV. This is why GM refers to it as an EREV, or an Extended Range Electric Vehicle. Why didn't the author mention the Volt?
The Volt's features counter every single critique in the article.
Oh, and countering the EV's environment friendliness with the argument that when they are manufactured they create pollution, and use dirty electricity from fossil fuel plants, etc. They aren't so "green". WAAAAAH!!!
My answer to those people is that I don't give a $hit about being green. I know my money is no longer going to some oil company executive's pocket (in who knows what country). Money is the only "green" that matters to me, it is the green I no longer spend at gas stations.
Come on JKav and Edmunds, you are better than this.
@quadricycle: I think public transit in America is pretty woefully underdeveloped, although some of the most major metro cities are OK in this regard for local transit. I still think cars will be an important factor in the future, although for obvious reasons I hope that the number of drivers diminishes in the future (especially the most horrible and distracted drivers). There's no point bringing infrastructure like roads into the discussion- world class countries like Japan and Germany maintain great roads AND public transit networks, they're not mutually exclusive. With 20% of traffic on the road comprising of commercial trucks, you will never get rid of them, they are the economic backbone! However, there is obviously room to improve on their 5.5 mpg fuel economy...
@lmbvette: I think the Volt might be lumped under the general "hybrid" tagline.
@smihal: It's pretty common sense to think that as battery tech gets better, we'll be more likely to see better hybrids rather than proliferation of electric vehicles, at least at first. Keep in mind that there was one point in history when electric vehicles were the choice over petrol vehicles... and that was at the turn of the (20th) century. Over the past 100 years the evolution of batteries has been slower than that of ICEs, although there's much more interesting nowadays in accelerating that. I'm not sure about the 1% figure either, but keep in mind that diesels and hybrids now have about a 3% marketshare and that's probably going to grow to 30% or higher by 2040 (making it less worthwhile to get a pure EV).
Personally I think that Hydrogen technology like the Honda Clarity should be getting much more money and attention. It is just as clean as battery electric, but without the range issues. It would require creation of a fueling station infrastructure, but so will creating a national network of electric stations like the ones for the Tesla. But unlike the Tesla, the Clarity can be refueled in a matter of 5-6 minutes, not 90.
Plus, a mostly electric powered transportation system will more power generation capacity than we have now and a vastly improved power grid (although that is necessary anyway). Whereas a hydrogen plants could be located in area's where there is already ample power generating capacity and/or where there is ample sunlight and run via solar.
I really don't understand why the technology gets so little press.
Either way, the nearly ideal solution already exists in the form of Voltec, available in the current Volt and 2014 Cadillac ELR. These cars allow most people to do all their regular daily driving on electricity, with the comforting backup and unlimited range of gasoline power when required. Other than initial purchase cost, there is no major downside to Voltec and some significant upsides, like their smooth and quiet operation and very low operating costs. It will be interesting to see to what degree GM can narrow the cost gap when Volt 2.0 debuts in a couple of years.
My own prediction is that by 2030 at least half of all passenger vehicles sold will have some form of electrification, from light hybridization to all out EV.
This potentially can create new markets, and economies:
1. The charging companies can make claims such as our batteries lasts longer between swaps, etc. Hence, there could potentially be a research driven market, resulting in faster results and improvements (remember how fast CPUs improved over the years)
2. You can solve the current waiting for a charge problem. Obviously, you would just swap. When competing companies produce longer lasting batteries, they would attract more customers to their stations, and when they can produce faster charging ones, they can improve their bottom lines..
3. As a consumer, you can buy the newest and greatest battery, or you can keep going for a swap, or some combination.
4. This can also solve EV owners' potential future problem of "What is going to happen to my car, when it longer holds a charge?", etc.
BTW, how come there isn't enough vehicles with Diesel and Battery combinations.. The technology has been around at least since World War 2 (that is more than 70 years). FYI, this is submarines ran in WW2
I am all in favor of R&D, and always try to find something better. If/when something better than gasoline comes along, i'll be one of the first in line.
As to the Volt comment below: the Volt is hybrid- fundamentally no different than the Prius (though an evolutionary one, perhaps).
-Fizz
At least in America, if not the planet, more convenient, less costly, motoring will move the market in your direction.
EVs cost less to charge/fuel than ICEs, and they are more powerful and can be charged from home, not the gas station. The ONLY thing holding EVs back is cost/battery tech. When batteries tech catches up to the EV tech in the Teslas, EVs will take off after 2020.
Tesla is onto something big, and they know it. For example, in one generation, they built a sports car as good as the BMW M5, which has been in development for 25 years? And it will save you thousands on fuel costs every year.
The upside is unprecedented.....
BD
Gasoline is, indeed, a good source of energy / gallon. Not as good as electricity, but good.
Gas is, also, not crude oil. It takes an amazing amount of energy to find it, extract it, refine it, move it and pump it just to get to a standard ICE car. Further, a significant part of the energy stored in gasoline is wasted as heat in an ICE vehicle, which is a terrible waste.
Some guy looking at the environmental impact of charging EV's from China's unregulated coal plants has nothing to do with the environmental cost of electricity here in the US. Nevermind that the US is less than 45% coal based electricity - here we have scrubbers on our coal plants that are much more effective than catalytic converters in ICE car engines. His analysis is crap and was paid for by the petroleum companies. Oh, and the electricity at my house is mostly solar.
The environmental impact of making batteries is an issue of sorts, but it is mostly an issue of the ICE vehicles needed to mine and transport the Li. The other issue is Cobalt anodes in Li batteries. That is a real issue until they finalize a substitute (which is looking about 2-3 years away). But even today it's just a bogus argument that ICE cars have less of an environmental impact than EV's. And don't forget that Li and Cobalt in EV's is recyclable. One of the great things automakers have done is gotten very good at recycling. There is NO loss of Li, or of Co in batteries and no reason not to recycle the base products or reuse the batteries in lower power uses for years afterwards.
Don't get me started on building engines, Oil, caltalytic converters, and other working parts of an ICE that are inefficient, break, and environmentally a disaster.
From an infrastructure perspective you have a sort of point, but you forget that every building in America has electricity. Yes, 110 V / 15 A is not going to charge much of anything - but it is a small change to run a 30 or 50 A / 220 V connection to a garage. The town I live in has 3 free charging stations already and it is a very small cost to put in another one. In short - I believe that the infrastructure is less than 3 years from viability across most metro areas of the US - and if you are lucky enough to have a Tesla (or MB or Toyota using Tesla's system) - you should be able to leverage upgraded superchargers this year that will completely recharge 200M+ range in less than 40 minutes.
Finally, batteries are on the cusp of some huge technology breakthroughs. I fully expect them to be lighter, faster charging, and significantly cheaper - especially if we can get the supercapacitor technologies ready for commercial use.
As gasoline engines get better it will be even harder for electric to take hold. yep the gasoline engine is hear for many many more years.
John Broder Lives! He just changed his last name to Edmunds.
Luckily, next generation batteries will virtually erase this advantage and they're only about 5 years out. If EVs can go as far and recharge faster then filling a gas tank, as well as costing as much as it's ICE counterpart, there isn't one reason, not one, to choose a gas powered car. With that being a reality within 5 to 10 years, how did this oil company shill come up with EVs still making up less then 1% of new vehicle sales?
Here's the thing Jason Kavanagh, if you're going to try and spread lies, you should at least give your audience the benefit of the doubt and not assume they share your knuckle dragging IQ. Also, don't make ridiculous statements without backing them up (oh, and don't use figures and facts that your friends at Exxon give you. People are on to that now).
And shame on you edmunds for giving this clearly ignorant writer with an agenda a forum to spew his rhetoric. We come here because we love cars and the great technologies that go along with them. This kind of nonsense only encourages us to go elsewhere... and that's pretty easy on the internet.
of course Ev will never be viable ... we've been trying to make better batteries for 100 years and this is as far as we've gotten ... yes, for 100 grand you can build an EV that matches a Chevy cruze for the first 200 miles ... after that not so much ...
simple physics shows the difficulty in try to build a rapid charging battery ... you are trying to transform a tremendous amount of energy from electricity to chemical form (the battery) ... thats very dangerous and costly ... refueling an ICE requires no energy transformation ...
lmbvette ... you should try reading the entire article before commenting ... no he didn't mention the Volt specifically but obviously was talking about Volt-like hybrids ...
I assume you are happy to line the pockets of Whole Foods executives since they provide you with something you want ... oil executives are no different and I'm happy to line their pockets especially if we get out of their way and let them drive the price of gas down to $2 again ...
So this is a better prediction of the future:
1)Once a transmission with more than one forward gear is improved to work reliably, EV's economy #'s will go up.
2)Irrational buying, just because others are buying will kick in, so keeping up with Smith family will work as it always did.
3)Maintenance and longevity of EV's is double of a diesel, and here we go again, who wants to spend 2 hours on an oil change.
Question is how how fast will EV's excell over hybrids. Faster than this Big Oil funded guy said.
Oil is dirty both acquiring it and consuming it - not to mention the worldwide political aspects. Electricity is not perfect by any means, but it offers some new direction & options over the never ending list of crap that comes with oil. Frankly I am happy to sit and crank out a few emails or calling mom to say hi while waiting for my car to charge. That is a great trade off for not feeding the worldwide empire of oil - not to mention the the financial savings of my EV. You'll get it - someday.