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Audi abandons combustion engine development

electrive.com

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Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#11

Post by sjwright »

kashprime wrote: post #5

ICE’s have over a century of development behind them now. I’m not going to miss them, but I wonder if there’s a way to ‘archive’ this kind of specialist mechanical engineering knowledge. It may come in handy one day. It’s depressing to read about engineers having to go to the Smithsonian to study the lunar lander to relearn some of the innovations and improvisations made at the time.

Even if we get to 99% EV within fifty years, it’s going to be a long while after that before EV takes over 100.000% of ICE.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#12

Post by bootlooped »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #7
endisneigh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? How?

The word development. They won’t be developing ICE technology any further. It seems unlikely to me that they’d stop producing ICEs altogether, but I can see why they’d focus on developing electric technologies instead.

But they're still iterating on current ICE engines, which you could call development. And in that case they're still developing ICE technology. It sounds like the only thing they're claiming is they will not come up with completely new designs.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#13

Post by andrewstuart2 »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #7
endisneigh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? How?

The word development. They won’t be developing ICE technology any further. It seems unlikely to me that they’d stop producing ICEs altogether, but I can see why they’d focus on developing electric technologies instead.

Yeah, this was exactly my train of thought. That and the fact that it'd be a different story/title if they had completely stopped producing ICE cars, not engine development. There are emissions targets they're still on the hook for.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#14

Post by devoutsalsa »

kashprime wrote: post #5

ICE’s have over a century of development behind them now. I’m not going to miss them, but I wonder if there’s a way to ‘archive’ this kind of specialist mechanical engineering knowledge. It may come in handy one day. It’s depressing to read about engineers having to go to the Smithsonian to study the lunar lander to relearn some of the innovations and improvisations made at the time.

I don’t remember the lunar lander, but I do recall reading how each rocket engine on the Saturn V was one of a kind, because the engineers had to assemble each one by hand, and each acted slightly differently. So there’s no way to reproduce a specific Saturn V engine now, but there also never was back when the Saturn V was still flying.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#15

Post by devoutsalsa »

sn_master wrote: post #10

I wonder if we'll ever see development in External Combustion Engines. They have the same instant torque as electric cars, and in their latest iterations were proven much more efficient than ICE.

Probably. Executives don’t get their bonuses if they don’t toss around phrases like synergy and economies of scale.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#16

Post by Aperocky »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #14
kashprime wrote: post #5

ICE’s have over a century of development behind them now. I’m not going to miss them, but I wonder if there’s a way to ‘archive’ this kind of specialist mechanical engineering knowledge. It may come in handy one day. It’s depressing to read about engineers having to go to the Smithsonian to study the lunar lander to relearn some of the innovations and improvisations made at the time.

I don’t remember the lunar lander, but I do recall reading how each rocket engine on the Saturn V was one of a kind, because the engineers had to assemble each one by hand, and each acted slightly differently. So there’s no way to reproduce a specific Saturn V engine now, but there also never was back when the Saturn V was still flying.

Would we do any differently today? I think we gravitated towards smaller and more numerous engines (that are easier to construct to the same exact copies), but nobody since has built anything remotely as large as the Rocketdyne F1.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#17

Post by akamaka »

kashprime wrote: post #5

ICE’s have over a century of development behind them now. I’m not going to miss them, but I wonder if there’s a way to ‘archive’ this kind of specialist mechanical engineering knowledge. It may come in handy one day. It’s depressing to read about engineers having to go to the Smithsonian to study the lunar lander to relearn some of the innovations and improvisations made at the time.

It seems inevitable that much of the practical knowledge is lost. Look at how few old sailing ships survive, despite that being the most advanced transportation technology for centuries. The schematics of the engines will survive, but future generations who study them will struggle to understand the design choices that went into them.

I’m happy that might change in the world of software, since so much collaboration is done online, and future historians will have troves of JIRA tickets to dig through.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#18

Post by p1necone »

sjwright wrote: post #11
kashprime wrote: post #5

ICE’s have over a century of development behind them now. I’m not going to miss them, but I wonder if there’s a way to ‘archive’ this kind of specialist mechanical engineering knowledge. It may come in handy one day. It’s depressing to read about engineers having to go to the Smithsonian to study the lunar lander to relearn some of the innovations and improvisations made at the time.

Even if we get to 99% EV within fifty years, it’s going to be a long while after that before EV takes over 100.000% of ICE.

I don't know about that, consider other tech that got superseded by new methods. It only took a couple of decades for there to be no companies manufacturing CRT TVs any more.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#20

Post by vbezhenar »

I don’t like those developments. I’m living in Kazakhstan which is huge and cold in winter. People are poor and average car age is 20 years (plenty of cars with 30+ age). Everything is just opposed to electric cars use-cases. And of course we’re too small to be able to manufacture our own engines.
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