The demise of the internal combustion engine
 

Today whilst driving from a meeting I was listening to the local news/debate show on the radio. I often do this because on occasion there is an interesting topic. Today's main topic was fracking which in itself is of no real interest to me: I am neither for nor against it and I know there are many who can present a strong argument for each side but that's not the point I'm making here, it's more of an introduction to what IS my point.
As the title suggests, the internal combustion engine .....is it on it's way out? I ask this because of the content of the aforementioned debate. One contributor to the radio show mentioned that BMW have stated (somewhere, I don't know where and he didn't say) that after 2020 they will drastically reduce the amount of time and effort they place on the development of engines as we currently know them. Their emphasis will apparently go toward electric/hybrid development.
Whilst this is nothing new in real terms I do find it rather sad. Yes there could/will be many benefits to our planet, our economy and whatever else but the thought of good old petrol engined motorcycles becoming a distant memory is kinda removing part of the appeal of them. I know it won't happen overnight and I can't see any law banning bikes (or cars) from using petrol being brought in in a hurry but the slow demise of the sound and smell of 'oily things' will ultimately remove a huge part of the appeal.
Some people call it progress and to a great extent I understand their point. But it's still somewhat sad when we look to the future and see it with a lot less of the sounds and smells that so many of us have come to love.

Horizons Unlimited or Limited
 

As one who has broached topics beyond the horizons of Horizons Unlimited and have been scorned and warned by mods of my inappropriateness, I was wondering if discussing the extinction of the internal combustion engine, perhaps due to the back engineering of products from more advanced civilizations, might also be bordering on the far horizon of Horizons Unlimited.

I raise my glass to ChrisFS as a fellow futurist, at least attracting some of our attention units to future change, and for braving the wrath of those who cannot even consider change so dramatic as to alter one's known universe, no matter if the change is for better or worst.

Eat Drink and raise a glass to our own futurist ChrisFS
xfiltrate

You can buy music as a download, on CD, on vinyl or as sheet music. I dare say if you know the right places you can get tapes, mini discs, 8 track and player piano rolls. Where there is demand there will be supply.

As a tool the vehicles will change. If my rep-mobile will let me chose between e-mail and the radio while it drives me to a meeting and go charge itself while I'm doing the job I'm happy. The trucks the meetings are about will the same, driverless and electric and you'll all be happy your **** from the auction site turns up and the supermarket stocks three sorts of tofu.

It only annoys when it doesn't work. The blue circle coming up when I tell the car to drive, battery life advertised at 1000 miles but more like 100, upgrades so it no longer does what I want etc. Will make me stay with what I know.

Overlanders may struggle during the changeover. Take your EU model to Africa and maybe the computer will say no. I remember phones and GPS doing this, but it got sorted in what, 5 years?

Andy

I think the internal combustion has quite a few years left in it. Hybrids are popular -at least in western Europe- but I personally feel they are a crappy half-step (yes, I loathe them) to the real next generation of vehicles, rather like minidiscs were a step between CDs and purely digital music.

As an overlander I would never buy any plasticy throwaway Europcrap car, let alone a glorified milk-float, but this is hardly relevant to 99.9% of road users. I'm happy for them to buy and drive whatever they want; I'll stick to my pre-common rail diesel and early-gen fuel injected petrol 4x4s made by Toyota until they can come up with something as versatile, rugged and reliable (all waning qualities in cars IMO).

change
 

Travel used to be by foot, horse, camel, very slow boat. There is a story that the first person killed by a train stayed on the track because he had never seen anything moving 25 mph before. I will be probably be in the ground before I buy a self-driving car or an electric bike for cross-country travel. But soon, and I think very soon, we will all put the camel out to pasture and get an electric bike.

There is no doubt in my mind that change is coming to the world of internal combustion engines. There is also no doubt in my mind that this will not appeal to a large segment of the motorcycle crowd. But I do believe that electric motorcycles will appeal to a brand new segment of the population who may in fact have been put off by the "noisy, oily and smelly" nature of the current breed of motorcycles.

I personally cannot wait for my own electric motorcycle once they make one with a decent range at an affordable cost. For now I'll stick with my trusty dual sport machine, complete with smelly, noisy, leaky internal combustion engine.

So should we be flogging off our oil burners while there's still some value in them and buying shares in battery companies? There's probably an electric vehicle start-up out there in a garden shed somewhere that'll turn out like Microsoft post 1980. If only I'd bought their shares back then <sighs heavily> :rofl:

Actually, for a huge number of people, the technology that causes their vehicle to move under its own power could well be electricity- or pixie dust or a rubber band or a hamster on a treadmill. They neither know nor care what's under the bonnet. It's only that every now and again they have to pour some foul smelling liquid into a hole in the side of it (and mix with a load of foul smelling builders, truck drivers and other low lifes while doing it) that gives them a clue.

The car companies have engineered away the necessity to have any mechanical knowledge at all. If you know that the pedals go up and down and the steering wheel goes round and round, that's it, you're good to go. When you're dissociated from what you're doing to that extent it really doesn't matter what powers the car. We seriously looked at changing my wife's car to electric last year as even a current technology one would do for 90% of her mileage. What put us off primarily was economics. Compared to a similar petrol powered one they're just not value for money. That, I suspect, may well change as and when some of the technical shortcoming are also engineered away.

While most of the western (inc the "eastern western") economies depend on oil in its various forms (fuel, chemicals etc) as the driver of their prosperity and that oil is relatively cheap very little is going to change though. Electric vehicles - and particularly those controlled by semi autonomous software - may have a kind of "tomorrow, available today" shine about them but as anything other than local transport they have serious shortcomings. Any country that artificially pushes any of the alternatives at the expense of oil will eventually face the economic consequences of that decision because just about every alternative to oil (electricity, gas, biomass, animal labour etc) is either impractical, in short supply, technically inferior or lacks public support.

I'm not surprised about the BMW little /no development decision. A couple of years ago I was talking with an engineer working for Jaguar Land Rover and he told me then that mechanical engine development was increasingly taking a back seat to software development. They could (more or less) get any engine characteristics they wanted from existing knowledge and the only real RnD was being done on control systems to make the cars easier to use, pack in more marketable gadgets, dodge emissions controls etc (he didn't say the last one!)

TWB - have you tried buying minidiscs recently! Or camera film come to that. I went shopping in the Oxford branch of Waitrose (a UK supermarket chain) yesterday. Twenty years ago the building next door used to be a substantial professional photo processing lab. Now it's a cafe. All the pro labs within a thirty mile radius of here shut down within a year or two of each other round about 2003-4. You can still buy pro grade camera film but the prices are probably x5 what they were 20yrs ago and good luck trying to get anything like the 2hr processing service that used to exist. It's more like two weeks these days. It's just not viable to use it for anything other than a retro hobby now. How soon until hobby petrol is £25 / gallon and you have to drive to Glasgow to buy it?

I'm depressed at the thought of it! :rofl:

Electric will be the future
 

Electric vehicles will be future, at least based on where the industry is headed.

And that is a good thing. For no other reason that electric motors are so unbelievably efficient. Not many of us will get the chance to test drive, let alone own, a Tesla. But if you get the chance to drive a Toyota Camry Hybrid they are pretty spectacular from a performance / efficiency perspective. I travel in a friends one to work often and it out accelerates other vehicles in its class while returning 52mpg on the highway.

But in reality its the 'Commodore 64' of Hybrid/electric technology. Compare a Commodore 64 to a new computer and the difference is stark.

Electric drive in particular will offer power and traction that bikes and 4wds could only dream of with much greater reliability.

Battery technology, life and storage are also accelerating. I think the future is going to be great.

https://c7.staticflickr.com/9/8263/2...0b3c7aa9_z.jpg

Quid a click :helpsmilie:

Makes these though

https://c6.staticflickr.com/9/8254/2...eb6644dc_z.jpg

:offtopic:

Andy

I think it's got 30-50 years before it's phased out and replaced with all electric motors in vehicles.

If the planet is going to survive, it's what has to happen really.

I also think petrol will be a luxury and 5x the relative price of today.

It will be a sad day. Imagine how all the Steam era folk felt when they went obsolete overnight.

30-50 years? I'll settle for that Ted! bier

Andy - you must one of those early adopters I keep hearing about :rofl:

This is what I'm still using -

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...psqpnviilk.jpg

Great for sports events though - I can knock out a picture every 10 mins or so :rofl:

Interesting program on the radio the other day about how when cars / trucks etc took over in the 1920's / 30's, horses went from being beasts of burden flogged from morning till night by men only interested in how much work (and therefore money) they could get out of them to hobby animals, the vast majority of which were (and are) owned by women.

I somehow doubt there'll be gender shift in the ownership of old petrol powered vehicles when electric vehicles become the new norm but I suppose there will always be a nostalgic rump of enthusiasts willing to manufacture their own fuel from potato peelings or something. Once electric vehicles improve to the point where they're at least as practical as current ones with charging technology / infrastructure / economics etc sorted out I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the commercial sale of petrol eventually stopped on health and safety grounds.

It's likely to be a while though before I can envisage seeing electrically powered trucks hauling 40 tons of chicken guts or something at 80mph on the interstate non stop from coast to coast across the US.

Interestingly I just returned from a trip to Vietnam where the Bike is king as far as transport goes. But very noticeable was the many electric scooters for sale and in use, particularly by school kids of a certain age ( 14, 15? ) job to tell - all the adults look 16 :rofl: ( what we doing wrong?)

It's quite clear they are years ahead of the UK adopting battery powered scooters, granted the "safety" & "regs" are no doubt more relaxed than UK & EU. I would estimate 75% of the kids with scooters had battery power and to be honest looked a lot safer on the road than the kids with the oversized bicycles! Pollution was vastly reduced too with 50 or so battery scooters rushing out of the schools at lunch time, compared to that of the 2 dozen or so petrol ones stopped at traffic lights.

My guess is it won't be long before "The demise of the internal combustion engine" is followed by "The demise of the electric motor" by some new power plant, currently being developed in a garden shed somewhere.....