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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the electrifying-news dept.

Speculating about the next years, Fred Lambert writes that once there are good all-electric options across the car market internal combustion engines will be as good as dead.

Before 2025, there's going to be a point where there's not going to be a single car buyer in their right mind who's going to want to buy a new gasoline car. Not a single one. Because they're going to look at the market, they're going to look at what's out there, and all the different electric car models that are out there now. By that point, by 2025, there's going to be dozens and dozens of more EV models than what's available today. And attractive ones!

It's going to be hard for someone to justify buying a gas-powered car at that point, because they're going to think about the resale value of it.

I think the resale value of gasoline cars is going to drop massively in the next five years, and predicted value is going to drop even more drastically. Buying a gasoline car right now is a bad choice. Buying a gasoline car within the next five years is going to be just a financial suicide for most people.

Earlier on SN:
Every Electric Vehicle on Sale in the US for 2019 and Its Range (2019)
Australian Plan to Ban Petrol and Diesel Cars (2019)
Have We Reached Peak Car? (2018)


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  • (Score: 1) by optotronic on Wednesday July 10 2019, @02:40AM (1 child)

    by optotronic (4285) on Wednesday July 10 2019, @02:40AM (#865262)

    Two words - series hybrid

    When I first heard about series hybrids, I thought they were a great idea. But I'm not aware of any yet for production vehicles.

    The first reports I read of the Chevy Volt, before it was released, claimed it was a series hybrid. Ultimately they chose to tie the engine directly in to the drivetrain as well as for charging the battery. The 2016 version used the engine even more for direct drive.
    https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1096942_2016-chevrolet-volt-powertrain-how-it-works-in-electric-hybrid-modes [greencarreports.com]

    Did Chevy discover something that makes series hybrids impractical? Besides the obvious complexities of having two forms of propulsion and two forms of fuel?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday July 10 2019, @01:21PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday July 10 2019, @01:21PM (#865363)

    In a series hybrid you *don't* have two forms of propulsion you just have an electric motor, the generator only converts chemical power to electrical.

    Perhaps they discovered their existing engine designs were a poor fit for generators? A constant-load generator is a *very* different beast than a car engine that has to provide large torque over a large range of speeds, and engine design is a pretty large investment.

    The USA market at least also tends to be focussed on peak power to an silly degree, and a parallel hybrids offer more of that. A series hybrid with a 100hp electric motor and a 30hp generator offers 100hp, whereas it would offer 130hp as a parallel hybrid - at the expense of greater mechanical complexity.

    It also sounds like they've found that highway driving is more efficient with direct ICE drive to the wheels (at least using existing engines), which is probably not extremely relevant to most drivers most of the time, but might have a major impact on the regulatory impact of the vehicle on what the manufacturer can get away with on their fully ICE vehicles.