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Audi abandons combustion engine development

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Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#31

Post by jeppesen-io »

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.

fifty years? no way. But even if you're right, what point are you trying to make?

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#33

Post by jeppesen-io »

donavanm wrote: post #30
pmorici wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are something like 1.4 billion vehicles in operation world wide and 80 million new vehicles are sold every year. That is at most 17 years once new vehicle sales are effectively 100% electric which will probably happen around 2030. The value of used gas cars will deteriorate rapidly as the spare parts and repair networks disappear and electric vehicle costs become much cheaper pulling forward demand for the tran…

You making a lot of assumptions that arent born out by current experience. Its not uncommon for 100 year old cars to be registered and driven on public roads today. I personally have registered “daily drivers” from the 1970s and 80s. I actually rebuilt my 1972 motorcycle using factory parts from the dealership. As cars get rare they tend to increase in value, which also increases the return on effort/money put in to…

and when 90+ precent of the cars on the road are EV - where are you going to get gasoline? or think how much an oil change will cost when motor oil becomes a specialty item

> You making a lot of assumptions that arent born out by current experience

current experience assume easy access to gasoline and motor oil that has been true for 100 years - that will pass in time

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#34

Post by akamaka »

benrbray wrote: post #28
akamaka wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Will they? Most companies' internal systems are locked down and we'll suffer the same problem. Open source is the best way we have right now to preserve software knowledge.

I’d bet the hosted services will hold onto data forever, so that they can mine it.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#35

Post by ehnto »

akamaka wrote: post #17
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 i…

One advantage ICE has over the historical preservation of sail is that cars as a collectors item are far easier to keep around, and much of the design artifacts will last much longer.

It's unlikely ICE cars will be banned from being driven in the next 30 years, if ever. Once electric is proliferated the effects of car enthusiasts will be negligible. Even if there are some bans, motorsport will hopefully continue.

Many car manufacturers run heritage parts programs and there is already a well established industry for maintaining the collector and enthusiast car fleet that has nothing to do with the new car cycle. People are engineering entirely new parts for old cars all the time, we won't be forgetting how ICE works for a while yet. Although the goal of all that engineering effort may shift from efficiency to efficacy in the form of motorsports parts.

I fully expect to have to keep barrels of E85 at my house so I can take my soon to be heritage vehicle to the track every now and then, but I don't see us forgetting how to engineer for combustion engines.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#37

Post by sitharus »

Aperocky wrote: post #16
devoutsalsa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These days we have computational fluid dynamics. We can simulate many more things to make an easy to build design rather than making manual adjustments to each one.

There’s been little need for a liquid fuelled engine that large though due to advances in solid rockets in the US and Europe, and a focus away from super-heavy launch vehicles elsewhere.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#38

Post by tablespoon »

akamaka wrote: post #17
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 i…

> 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.

I doubt it. In my experience, JIRA tickets don't capture much information like that. Also, my employer at least has trouble maintaining actual design documents over the long term [1] that stuff that everyone views as transient has pretty much no chance.

Also, a lot of collaboration tools, while technically being more archiveable (e.g. slack, typical meeting recordings), are in practice so disorganized that they are rarely even useful as a long term reference for the teams that use them. Unless the team's software is truly world changing, I don't think any historians would bother.

Personally, I think the kinds of very formal processes that are unfashionable in the world of software are the ones that are most capable of capturing the reasoning behind design choices for future generations.

[1] stuff is spread across so many places, and a lot gets when we migrate from one enterprise collaboration system to another, or as teams reorganize.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#39

Post by pmorici »

donavanm wrote: post #30
pmorici wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are something like 1.4 billion vehicles in operation world wide and 80 million new vehicles are sold every year. That is at most 17 years once new vehicle sales are effectively 100% electric which will probably happen around 2030. The value of used gas cars will deteriorate rapidly as the spare parts and repair networks disappear and electric vehicle costs become much cheaper pulling forward demand for the tran…

You making a lot of assumptions that arent born out by current experience. Its not uncommon for 100 year old cars to be registered and driven on public roads today. I personally have registered “daily drivers” from the 1970s and 80s. I actually rebuilt my 1972 motorcycle using factory parts from the dealership. As cars get rare they tend to increase in value, which also increases the return on effort/money put in to…

Museum pieces are not what we are talking about here.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#40

Post by lixtra »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #36

Yeah, I was actually thinking of buying a corvette or other sports car. Because I figure it will be a collectible and worth more money than I pay for it down the line. As they stop making gas cars.

How will you refuel it once there is no gas station network anymore? (Assuming electric Utopia is going to come).
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