First it was just France, but recently the United Kingdom has come out and agreed that the internal combustion engine, the heartbeat for just about every vehicle on the road today, has an expiration date: 2040. That is the year that Europe intends to walk away from piston-driven power plants in automobiles. In addition, certain cities are planning on banning diesel vehicles from city centers by 2025, and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has been vocal in his claims that the actions are not nearly enough, calling for a “fully funded diesel scrapple fun” and reforms that allows cities in the UK to take their own actions against the piston engine. And no, combination hybrid setups are not to be included in the “saved” category.
There’s no doubt that the moment Volkswagen’s gigantic faux pas involving the cheating programs on their diesel engines has left a bad taste in the mouths of many Europeans, especially those who a decade ago had embraced oil burners as a viable move forward towards a cleaner future. But with more and more governments on board to punt the internal combustion engine straight to the scrap heap without so much as a second thought, we have to wonder if the heartbeat of what we all enjoy has finally developed a shelf life.
It should go without saying that we are not on board with this concept at all. When a brand new Corvette can be a neck-snapper on the track and still rack up over 30 MPG when driven modestly, piston engines are, if anything, better than they ever have been. The days of seeing a smoke-belching beater driving up the boulevard is pretty much over…or, at least, it doesn’t happen near as often as I remember it happening nearly thirty years ago. We have managed to advance engine outputs so far that today, you can buy a three-cylinder that packs just shy of 200 horsepower, four cylinder engines that crate around power levels seen by V8 muscle cars in the 1990s, V6 engines that are outright screamers and V8s that carry the kind of performance that would have been enough to wage war in the pro levels of racing back in the musclecar’s heyday, all with the latest safety, tech, and aerodynamic work available.
So what do you think? Is this off-the-wall levels of tin-foil hat thinking, or will we see the day where we have to hide what is ours because the government said we can’t play with our toys anymore?
Firstly, in this vast timescale, it is impossible to say that the ic engine will in fact be banned. Secondly this is just a ploy for the petrochemical companies to buy out all the utility companies to corner the market in electricity generation. But the real spanner in the works is the fact that the whole planet will one day be covered in fume belching power stations which will struggle to keep up with the demand for power to charge electric cars.
This only applies to new vehicles so there may be absolutely no demand for expensive limited mileage cars and the classic market will boom.
Just as well I won’t be around to see it….
“firstly” is that like our president’s “bigly”…? 🙂
Its all fun and games in the planning stage but the reality will be different. I suspect a few cities or countries will go this route for a few years and then reverse coarse when the inconvenience outweighs the tree huggers.
Energy is energy, whether you convert it from chemical to mechanical at the point of need (the IC engine) or if you convert it from chemical to electrical then to mechanical (thus adding another level of inefficiency), the effects on the environment is the same. There is not enough green energy to fuel our automotive needs- nuclear in out of vogue, wind and solar are limited as to where they can be generated in an economical form, which leaves only fossil fuel. Which means the environment gets polluted at a centralized source if you use electric cars. Unless you plan on everyone riding bicycles.
Yep- this ban will last a couple of years. But then the inconvenience, the increased costs, and the out right pain of it will be more than the tree huggers will be able to overcome. Just imagine how this will affect logistics- that alone will kill the idea in large countries like the US.
BTW . . . the media got it wrong. France and the UK are not banning the ICE by 2040. They are banning the CONVENTIONAL ICE by 2040. What both countries want are Hybrids.
50 years -= that’s what my crystal ball says.
My take on the French ban is that it’s politician theater. Say they’re going to do a ban on internal combustion engines, set it so far off in the future THEY won’t be up for re-election when it rolls around, and let a future legislature get stuck with explaining “This was a big mistake, the technology isn’t ready, and we’re rolling it back.”
I suspect the internal combustion engine will be around for a couple hundred years, at least in some applications. Their share of the market is likely to become increasingly smaller as other technologies improve and fuel gets more expensive, though.
the few who govern and make the laws for us have it all wrong again Adam Smith said it best in the book WEALTH OF NATIONS the laws of supply and demand what we need is a few less lawyers making demands in a world that they do not contribute too i might add respect the beverage
No ban in America. The problem will be getting enough youngsters interested to maintain “economies of scale” and support the parts market at blue collar prices.
Never. In the words of Charlton Heston…….
“From my cold, dead, hands.”
Decades at least. This is seriously a First World problem. In most of the world there is not even the beginning of an infrastructure to support electric vehicles. There is, however, a mature and functioning method to distribute liquid fuel.
The only places EVs have made an inroad is where the government distorts markets through tax incentives and top-down mandates. Those governments are fortunate their citizens are Gruber voters who don’t know electric vehicles have a much, much larger carbon footprint than is commonly believed.
its going to be fun watching the economies that are so distorted by such anti market policies crash and burn.
The internal cumbustion engine is here to stay, as long as there is no alternative that is availeble to everybody not just the rich, or the ecofriendly the only option is the ice. Here in Europe hybrid cars are expensive and not for everybody, Electric cars are not good enough for people with alot of miles to work etc. The infra structure is not good enough. Think how Big a Challenge it would be to get merchandise cross country without diesel trucks. Im all for the enviroment and all that. But it would be better to stop eating cows and making the 3 World countries stop poluting the seas and air. The World cannot funktion without the car as things are today. Maybe in 50 years.
The horse never went extinct. There are more horses now, than ever before.
They are now kept for pleasure and sport, instead of transportation. The ICE
will always be with us, if only for sport. Mass transit is a government hoax, it’s
real goal is to control the movement of the populace. Autonomous cars will
have their movement controlled by government computer oversight. The romance of the automobile (as we know it) is it gives us the freedom to move swiftly and effectively at OUR direction. The much acclaimed TESLA doesn’t make money on it’s cars. It exists because of subsidies by a government that
abhors the fact it can’t control our internal combustion engines.
Vote with your right foot!
Being as I am probably the only person on this forum to have worked both sides of the ICE/BEV fence I’ll offer an insight and then a prediction.
First of all, miles per gallon is not a measure of how “clean” a tailpipe might be. Sure a new Corvette can achieve up to 30 MPG in certain driving modes but that does not indicate what level of CO, HC, NOX, CO2, and Oxygen is being emitted at any given moment. However, if the vehicle is sold in the US it must have, at one point, been certified by the EPA as compliant for sale as a motor vehicle. As we all now know, these numbers can be grossly misleading as in the case of VW.
Second, ALL motor vehicle manufacturers derive a level of revenue from government subsidies be it carbon credits, compliance vehicle allowances, or direct rebates. Using the argument that Tesla only exists because of the carbon credits offered by the EPA or the BEV rebates offered to buyers is moot. Ford, GM, and Fiat get plenty of the same in a variety of methods.
Finally, these governmental moves by European countries like France, the UK, and Norway are not unlike any other political wrangling that goes on the world over. Someone is reaping a benefit in monetary terms by creating and passing such measures. One would think that over time with advancements in technology that the natural phase out of ICE vehicles that run on any fossil fuel would occur. But, I don’t take any of these “bans” seriously until three key countries get on board…China, India, and the US. When they go this route…IF they go this route…they’ll will have my attention.
35 years. In 2052 we will see the final consumer vehicle equipped with an internal combustion, fossil fuel based engine sold. It will take another 75-100 years for them to naturally disappear likely due to the sparse supply of gasoline and diesel fuels.
cold, dead hands. Europe is not the US. 99.9% of people who live in Europe use a car for less then 40 miles a week. There, it makes all the sense in the world (except Scandinavian countries) to have electric, city cars.
To those in the US, think of Europe as one, big LA traffic jam. There are the rare places where things open up, but for the most part it’s city/suburb living.
This is a little bit skewed, I live in the middle of England and I don’t know anyone who does 40 miles or less in a week,maybe in the big cities where public transport is good but not most places. Most of Europe is quite rural and green come over to the UK you’ll be surprised.
No one here or any government abroad has mentioned how:
A. To build any new buildings without an ICE. You really think an solely electric powered anything is going to be able to move steel or concrete to a job site?
B. To maintain or build any sort of infrastructure for growing towns or cities?
Are the large steel or concrete pipes going to put themselves into the ground?
C. To build the large, electric wind generators that dot so much of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas? How are the blades going to get down the highway to those remote places where these things are put up? What are you going to use to put them together?
D. Your going to put fires out with ………hopefully something more than a Tesla? Oh that’s right the fire trucks of today are having to put out the self-igniting fire starters now.
E. How does your local Walmart get their products to thousands of their stores? Put up a railroad track to every store and run an electric train to it?
I think this is only a small start, aside from that I’ve not got enough deodorant for this idea.
And don’t forget the need for electric ships. Or do we revert back to sail-power.
Also, when trucking goods in your electric truck from one side of Australia to the other, you’re going to need a bloody long extension lead….
The elephants in the room no one is talking about is there isn’t sufficient power grid infrastructure to support a switch to all electric cars or other means. There also isn’t any push to improve battery tech which is where the real needs is. It is all just political posturing unless those two HUGE issues are addressed.
They want to switch away from gas & diesel, yet have no real plan how to go about it. Brilliant.