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Audi abandons combustion engine development

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Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#71

Post by donavanm »

hef19898 wrote: post #61
donavanm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have one, too. Not really as a daily driver, gas mileage just sucks. When the daily driver is about to be replaced one day, it will certainly be by an EV. I think that the main issue will be maintenance of ICEs in the future. Like try to find a garage that is able to tube carburators these days. It will be a while until we reach that point so.

Exactly why I brought up very early cars and my carb’d motorcycle. They go out of common use but dont disappear anymore than carriages or horses have. Fully urbanised and developed countries have them as a collection or passion project and do silly things like bodge or manufacture specialty parts and fuel blends while reading esoteric haynes manuals on carb tuning. Meanwhile they remain commonplace where it makes sense, small portable two strokes, aircraft, developing nations, etc.

The thought that civilization is going complete displace and lose hydrocarbon based engines and logistics in 17 years... Its optimistic I guess?

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#72

Post by dvdkhlng »

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 think we have already "lost" similar amounts of knowledge when the mechanical typewriters went away. And the mechanical calculators (and mechanical clocks?).

Or have you recently looked through a book on vacuum tube circuit design? Even more modern transistor-based analog circuit design is going to fade somewhat, as more and more parts of devices are moved to digital circuits.

It is a little terrifying and sad to see how many incredible ideas, that took a lot of smart people to develop, are basically thrown away over time.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#74

Post by jansan »

Neil44 wrote: post #70

Audi is a sub-brand of VW Group which owns 12 vehicle brands in total that share engines. I find it strange that an announcement like this would come from a sub-brand and not mention the other wider brands.

I would assume that the Volkswage group cannot abandon development for some reasons:

1. They cover markets that will not be ready for EV in the near future.

2. They will need combution engines for trucks for the forseeable future. I do not think that the Diesel engine has really reached the full potential, yet.

3. While the share of combustion engines will go down significantly, it will not become zero. Having one centralized engine development division may be sufficient for the future.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#75

Post by 29083011397778 »

cbmuser wrote: post #53
vbezhenar wrote: post #20

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.

Don’t worry, they‘re not going to stop making and selling cars with combustion engines in the foreseeable future for the reasons you mentioned. This whole electric car hype exists in wealthy urban bubbles only and only because they are heavily subsidized. These cars are still not competitive in the market after all these years and they are completely useless in cold or rural regions.

> only because they are heavily subsidized

I mean, you're right - electric vehicles are heavily subsidized. But it's not like it's a one way street where ICE cars have no (indirect, in this case) subsidies. The petro industry has its own share of funding and tax breaks, ranging from greenwashing and public imaging [0] to regular old tax breaks [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Energy_Centre#Funding

[1] https://kimsiever.ca/2020/10/20/alberta-oil-gas-firms-get-3-...

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#76

Post by wallaBBB »

Neil44 wrote: post #70

Audi is a sub-brand of VW Group which owns 12 vehicle brands in total that share engines. I find it strange that an announcement like this would come from a sub-brand and not mention the other wider brands.

VW group until recently believed in progress through internal competition, and VW and Audi were the main drivers of this philosophy, but since few years ago VW group announced that they will stop with this and focus on common development across brands. This was most likely done to minimize the automotive crisis impact that was anticipated even without Covid in sight.

Audi saying they will not be doing further development, basically doesn't say much in light of this change. Could be more of a marketing thing in the end, or maybe to put some pressure on EU regulations... Generally VW is doing a poor job at transitioning to EV and "connected" vehicles (just take a look at some reviews of ID.4, or issues latest Golf model has) and they do need to put a bigger focus there.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#77

Post by sbierwagen »

vbezhenar wrote: post #20

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.

I'm an American software developer who lives near the headquarters of Microsoft. My car is 15 years old.

Cars just last a hell of a lot longer than they used to. Even if every Western manufacturer stopped making petrol cars, you could still buy them from Russia or China.

And everyone stopped making cars, well, it's not impossible to have a domestic auto industry. After all, Detroit started from nothing. If you didn't care at all about emissions or fuel economy, a large-displacement 2-stroke engine wouldn't be hard to make. Heck, in the future, it might be harder to get hydrocarbon fuels (either synthetic or ultradeep drilling, which really does require exotic technologies) than it would be to make engines.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#78

Post by dkarp »

xiphias2 wrote: post #50

The plans for the Euro 7 standard are “technically a huge challenge with at the same time little benefit for the environment”. “This places extreme restrictions on the internal combustion engine,” Duesmann said. If the Euro 7 standard has little benefit for the environment, it should be stricter, because the cities are full of toxic gases.

They’re saying it has little benefit for the environment and yet they’ve stopped developing new ICEs in favour of electric. Seems like it’s working to me

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#79

Post by rasz »

0xfaded wrote: post #64
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.

At the front of my mind are aircraft piston engines, which haven't progressed much beyond the 60s. One notable exception are the Diamond Astro engines, which are based on mercedes blocks. Seeing as mass scale ICE development is probably a deadend, hopefully the current state of engines will hold over until battery energy densities become viable for light aircraft (an extremely selfish desire, i admit).

Lack of civilian aviation development is a result of misguided regulation. "OMG stuff is dangerous, lets require expensive certification for even the most trivial things ... except for the dangerous stuff that is already in use right now" and then we end up with brand new 2021 Helicopters shipping with 70 year old Lycoming engines.

Re: Audi abandons combustion engine development

#80

Post by hef19898 »

donavanm wrote: post #71
hef19898 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one, too. Not really as a daily driver, gas mileage just sucks. When the daily driver is about to be replaced one day, it will certainly be by an EV. I think that the main issue will be maintenance of ICEs in the future. Like try to find a garage that is able to tube carburators these days. It will be a while until we reach that point so.

Exactly why I brought up very early cars and my carb’d motorcycle. They go out of common use but dont disappear anymore than carriages or horses have. Fully urbanised and developed countries have them as a collection or passion project and do silly things like bodge or manufacture specialty parts and fuel blends while reading esoteric haynes manuals on carb tuning. Meanwhile they remain commonplace where it makes sen…

Well, you still get OEM parts for Zenith carbs from the 60s. So I guess there will always be a rest of ICE powered cars. I wouldn't mind using green fuel or gas. Which might be the way forward for classics, mainstream I honestly only see EVs and fuel cells in the developed world.
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