The dam has broken. Automakers, especially in Europe, have gone from: EVs are a pipe dream, to gas-powered cars are dead, and now finally to: Gas-powered cars aren’t going away anytime soon. The cracks started to form last year, as companies started pushing back their all-EV plans by a few years. At least one automaker has pushed that back to eternity.
I do these little news roundups every day, and it always pleases me when The Morning Dump has a coherent theme that weaves through all the stories. Today, it’s electrification. Electrification isn’t going away, even if the transition to fully-electrified cars isn’t happening on a predictable timetable.
For BMW, that means one senior exec saying that the timetable is now “never” for combustion-powered vehicles. Bentley is following suit, mostly because it relies on Volkswagen platforms that’ll be shared with Porsche. Volvo, too, is invested in hybrids, although Jeep is killing at least one of its PHEV platforms before it even goes to market.
At least Jeep’s deciding not to make that car by choice. JLR is going to go a full month without production against its will.
‘ICE And Combustion Will Never Disappear. Never’ Says BMW Board Member
The quote above has been working its way around the web this weekend, and I thought it was worth approaching, both for what I think is being said and for the context I think is being missed.
From a macro perspective, it’s important to restate the obvious: Automakers were unrealistic with their electrification goals. Why? It’s probably a mix of things, and that mix will depend a lot on the specific automaker.
Right up front, I want to grant that automakers are made up of individual decision-makers, and my optimistic view is that most of those decision-makers want the planet to survive. Cars are a part of the global warming problem, but they’re not the only cause. I’d argue that we focus disproportionately on the cars themselves and not the infrastructure and building patterns that make us reliant on cars.
Urban planning is a hard, long process, and just swapping out gas-powered cars with electric ones is an easier pill for automakers to swallow than, say, trains. Just keep making cars, but make them electric. Get credit for saving the planet and rake in a lot of money.
There’s another reason. The massive valuation given to Tesla made it seem like EVs were imminent, and that anyone still making gas-powered cars would be a dinosaur by the end of the decade. Unfortunately, the adoption rate started leveling off. Most automakers led with expensive EVs, which was already a market saturated by Tesla. Automakers no longer got a stock boost by just saying they were going to electrify.
Regulation was the last piece, with many parts of the globe setting higher and higher standards that could only reasonably be achieved with an extremely high percentage of electric cars.
With the market turning, regulation being revised/reversed, and the insane valuations disappearing, automakers are realizing very late that something has to change.
That’s the background for this quote, from an Autocar India article:
With governments retreating from ambitious 2035 all-EV targets and demand patterns varying sharply across regions, the German automaker is pursuing a dual-path strategy that keeps internal combustion engines (ICE) firmly in play while investing heavily in pure EVs.
“ICE and combustion will never disappear. Never,” said Jochen Goller, member of the board of management of BMW AG for customer, brands and sales, underscoring the company’s belief that electrification will coexist with conventional drivetrains in the foreseeable future.
Goller’s emphatic comment frames BMW’s strategy: Instead of betting on a single technology to define the 2030s, BMW is investing in multiple ones but simplified into a leaner, more scalable structure.
The context is that he’s saying this in India. Electric cars require a lot of new infrastructure to be built, and it’s not clear that the economics justify that kind of infrastructure everywhere. Where there are developing nations that use a lot of hydroelectric energy, like Nepal, EV adoption may be quick. In other areas, where even keeping the lights on is an issue, it’s likely to be slower.
BMW’s plan is not to get rid of gas-powered cars, though BMW has made a huge investment in EVs. BMW’s plan is instead to offer the widest range of powertrains possible, fitted appropriately to each market. Compared to VW, at least, the Bavarian automaker has been a little better about being flexible.
The reality is that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone, and car execs should have known that all along. Forever is a mighty long time, just ask Prince (or Big K.R.I.T.). It’s possible that either through the sheer force of will or some kind of technological advancement that everything will become an EV in my lifetime.
It’s also possible that what will happen first is the electrification of everything. This means almost everything becomes a hybrid, a PHEV, or an EREV.
Bentley Can’t Go Full EV Either
As a part of the larger Volkswagen Group, Bentley shares platforms with Audi and Porsche. This means that as those companies walk back their EV plans, so must Bentley.
Per the UK version of Autocar:
Bentley CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser told Autocar that as the three brands share platforms, drivetrains and other key components, decisions and investments in Stuttgart and Ingolstadt have had direct consequences in Crewe.
[…]
As such, pure-petrol successors to the Bentayga, Continental GT and Flying Spur are set to remain part of the line-up, reflecting demand from key markets such as the Middle East and North America. They were originally expected to be offered only with PHEV or EV powertrains.
Backing the decision, Walliser said: “There is a dip in demand for luxury electric vehicles, and customer demand is not yet strong enough to support an all-electric strategy. The luxury market is a lot different today than when we announced Beyond100.
“Electrification is still our goal, but we need to take our customers with us.”
I like that last line. Also, I still think Walliser should be the next Porsche CEO.
Jeep Kills The Gladiator PHEV, Volvo Plans To Build Hybrid XC90 In The United States
There’s a way to look at the PHEV Stellantis vehicles as compliance cars, built primarily to avoid having to pay carbon penalties and take advantage of tax credits (and to be sold in CARB-aligned states). While they’re good vehicles if they’re always plugged in, it’s not clear how often they are plugged in, and there have been lingering questions about quality.
The Jeep Gladiator is also, in its own way, a compliance vehicle, in that it complied with the requirement that every large automaker offer some sort of mid-sized pickup truck. I like the Gladiator, but low sales volumes already make the fitting of a PHEV system a questionable move.
Now that Congress and the White House have effectively killed fuel economy penalties by setting them to $0, it seems entirely unnecessary. Stellantis, for that reason or another, seems to agree that it’s not necessary, according to a statement given to The Detroit News:
“As customers’ propulsion preferences for battery-electric trucks continue to evolve, Stellantis is reassessing its product strategy and will no longer include an electrified Gladiator variant in the Jeep lineup,” said a company statement sent by spokesperson Andy Bowman.
Bad news for the suppliers, but I’m not expecting a lot of customers are going to care. I am generally supportive of PHEVs, it’s just that they need to have more than 10-20 miles of range to be effective.
Volvo, for its part, will reportedly build an XC90 hybrid in South Carolina at the end of this decade. While Volvo didn’t specifically say it’ll be an XC90, that’s the best guess at the moment, and it seems to conform to the company’s statement that it’s “designed to meet the specific demands of the U.S. market.”
JLR Can’t Build Anything For At Least Another Week
Jaguar is still planning to go all-EV so far as I can tell, though Land Rover definitely plans to keep building combustion-powered cars well into the foreseeable future. For the moment, no one at JLR is building anything as the JLR Cyberdisaster is now stretching production delays until the end of the month, as Automotive News Europe reports:
Jaguar Land Rover is extending the closure of its factories until Oct. 1 following a cyberattack that has left its operations paralyzed and smaller suppliers struggling.
“We have made this decision to give clarity for the coming week as we build the timeline for the phased restart of our operations and continue our investigation,” JLR said on Sept. 23.
JLR’s factories in Britain produce about 1,000 cars a day and the automaker is said to be losing tens of millions of pounds, with many of its 33,000 staff told to stay at home.
It’s possible that, even if JLR gets production started next week, disruptions could last through the end of the year.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
For no reason at all, The White Stripes have been in my head all week. Specifically, “Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine.”
Acetaminophen, you see the medicine
Oh girl
The Big Question
Which major, non-EV automaker will be the first to actually go 100% BEV?
Top photo: BMW
This discussion about EV vs ICE gets into something I’ve said for years.
Global Warming is bad marketing.
The problem is scale. About 37 billon tons of CO2 is emitted each year in the world. If I drove a large pickup with a giant ICE engine, I might emit 1kg every mile. Or about 20Ton of CO2 a year. Or 0.0000000054% of the world’s CO2 emissions.
Which means that from a global scale, choosing to drive a small EV vs a giant fuel sucking truck means jack squat on global warming. “I’ll drive what I want and let someone else change what they drive.”
However, people will change based on visual impacts to the local environment. LA drivers want EVs more than big ass trucks. Why? Because in the last 20+ years, the sky has gone from highlighter yellow to pale blue and it’s still getting better.
Europeans widely have accepted low soot diesels for years. All you have to do to see why is to look at famous landmarks from the 1970s before this switch where everything was black and nasty looking to see why.
Global warming is a real problem, but the solution is to focus on the advantages to someone’s local life. Cleaner air that they personally breath. Less soot on local landmarks. A return of birds to their backyards. That sort of stuff.
Because with a focus on “saving the planet” everyone can expect someone else to change and not actually change themselves. When enough people think that way, nobody changes.
Not subsidizing gasoline (i.e. make it visibly more expensive) also works.
But it’s not popular. No-one will be elected by promising to triple gas prices. But people have been elected to clean up rivers, clean up the local air, etc, because they can see a benefit in their daily lives.
(joke with a point), What difference does it make if Florida is underwater in 50 years to me? I’d be over 100 and honestly, a lot of Florida needs a bath anyway.
Keep the global perspective, but dress it for local concerns. Like DDT was banned because it was killing birds. Everyone likes birds. If you can show that high CO2 means less flowers or bees or something, then you can convince people to vote for someone in favor of a gas tax.
The carrot over stick approach always works better for these kind of things too. Yelling at people you should feel bad because the environment is terrible marketing.
You can see it take place quickly with battery lawn equipment. People will buy battery lawn equipment by their self because it’s cheap and easy lighter and less trouble. But a funny thing happens in an area where a gas lawn equipment ban is rumored or voted on to take place. All the sudden people think I can’t have that anymore I better go get one just in case. Then they start using it again. Even though they may have been using battery stuff for a year or two.
I’ve talked to people getting ready to buy a new ice car when they would have been prime for an EV. They say like they want to get one now while they can then when they have to transition they will.
Yep. I wasn’t big on battery nothing until I got a cordless drill. Life changing that is. I don’t know where any screwdrivers are now. Then I got a deal on a cordless weedeater. Not having to try to start an overheated 2 stroke after getting the string untangled was a game changer.
Nobody told me to get this stuff. I just got a good deal on it and loved it.
My only issue with cordless things is having to buy new batteries from time to time (and disposing of the old ones) and their weight. Eventually it becomes difficult to impossible to find replacement batteries and you have to bin an otherwise working machine. Manufacturers know this and have adjusted the build quality accordingly. Meanwhile, my 40 or 50 year old Craftsman drill just keeps on keepin’ on, as long as I’ve got an extension cord.
They make adapters for most systems now. They can be 3d printed too. You can also take the old packs apart and replace the cells. Sometimes there are battery places around that do it for you. I had an interstate battery guy that was rebuilding all different tool batteries. If it’s something you use more the motor tech has come some such a long way it might be better just to move on to a new system. Even the Walmart hyper tough stuff is incredibly good now. Or you can find various Chinese tools that use the same systems as Makita, DeWalt and Milwaukee. Sometimes even black and Decker.
My dad had a bunch of 25 year old black and Decker battery tools. I rebuilt the packs for him because he kept yelling about it but it turned out he liked his harbor freight stuff better the old stuff just didn’t have the motor.
The cordless vacuum was a game changer for me.
Still haven’t upgraded to that. We have a Great Pyreness mix and a German Shepherd and board a lot of other dogs that drop fur in fist sized clumps. I don’t know if I trust a cordless battery to not crap the bed with our daily vacuum chores.
You can replace the Dyson batteries, it’s just a single screw and a connector to unplug. We’ve had ours for 10 years now and it sees heavy use. The original battery lasted 8 years. Every year or so I take the thing apart and give it a thorough cleaning.
Yeah but Dyson. I can afford one of those or food for the semi-mobile dust bunny generators that inhabit my abode. But not both.
Cordless impact was a game changer for me I don’t know how I lived without one or two.
I moved into a new neighborhood a few years ago and it’s been really funny to witness. Almost everyone bought battery lawn mowers and equipment. It was a bit surreal because you never heard any noise from yard maintenance. But then there was talk of gas equipment ban not even really in the area but in a neighboring area. All the sudden gas is back with its noise. So much and older lady saw me using a battery mower and went wow that’s quiet. But just a year ago just about everyone was using battery equipment. The same thing happened in my sister’s neighborhood.
I miss Meg White. That is all.
Me too. One of the top two most controversial drummers of all time (Ringo being the other one)
The “Metronome” was almost the anti-drummer for Rock and Roll for two reasons:
* Her lack of emotion.
Look at a typical rock band. They can be going for a slow ballad with an easy listening groove to take a break from the heavier songs, and the drummer will be bouncing around, occasionally yelling something and twirling sticks or the like. The Muppet Animal isn’t really too far from the reality of 99% of rock drummers.
Meg suffered from terrible stage fright and anxiety. She was working her rear off holding her stuff together behind that mask of disinterest. It made her stand out.
* Her choices.
Drummers not only keep the beat for a song, but they add drama. Almost all add drama with fills. Little additional sounds to tell the listener that something big is coming. Maybe a giant drum fill to show that something huge is going on. I can give tons of examples of Hall of Fame drummers adding these fills to take a song to the next level of emotions to make the hook sink in deeper.
But I can only think of one drummer that sinks that hook in deeper by REMOVING sounds. Meg will set a groove and stick to it relentlessly (thus the Metronome nickname). Then just as the song is about to go to a big part, she’ll skip something. This skip is enough to make you know something big is about to happen, but in a way you don’t even notice she did that. It’s just that you suddenly think “oh here it comes!” and you don’t even know why unless you really listen to what Meg didn’t do.
Meg gets a lot of flak because so many beginners can nail White Stripes drum parts quickly for a couple measures. Meg gets a ton of respect from fellow hall of fame drummers, because they would have never come up with that part.
White Stripes was a great band. Other “garage bands” from the era never had the impact they did. And a lot of it was because Meg didn’t play the drums the way anyone else did.
Thank you for this Hoser. I really liked it. 🙂
I’m sure people said the same thing about lead paint, or overnight passenger vessels with wooden superstructures, but when the government bans something, it goes away, simple as that, doesnt matter if there’s market forces working against the current of the ban, orders are orders. If you can’t sell your old product anymore, and people don’t want your new product, you just go out of business, that’s how regulations work
When I was a kid, I was taught to not eat paint because it would make you dumb. However, I wondered about that, because I didn’t know any kids that ate paint that weren’t dumb already.
My joke when I meet somebody at a gathering and they ask me what I do for work is “I make fruit flavored lead based paint for preschools”. The looks I get are great.
Could be worse. I tell people I work in Nuclear Power. They look at me like I have 6 eyes
I do love how Stellantis makes a half assed PHEV and when they don’t sell say that PHEV is not attractive to the buying public. Maybe make the battery have 60 miles of range and see what happens. Also, maybe have it not made by Stellantis.
As I understand it, the 4xe Wrangler was super popular. I would think that would extend to the Gladiator, but there’s nothing logical about the Gladiator. But they’re probably killing their margins with warranty issues – build one variation, try to build it correctly, and be done with it. When they aren’t paying millions for offset credits, the motivation goes away.
Making it a better product is an alternative, but not really how they operate, is it?
I dunno my N54 was actively trying to cease being an engine on a daily basis. Don’t underestimate yourself BMW.
You get my like, but coming less than 24 hours after my N54 puked all of its coolant onto the pavement, this is a little raw…
You guys are so kind, reinforcing my justified fear of BMW ownership. 😉 I’d love me an older 2 or maybe 3-series coupe and they’re not even that expensive (to buy, not necessarily to own) but I don’t think I’ve currently got the extra mental bandwidth to deal with all that it entails.
If you get an earlier 128i/328i, the naturally aspirated engine is fairly stout.
I’m a weirdo who actually likes the way the 1 series looks, and they drive nice (like an older BMW), and I dig the spartan interiors too. But both the four and six scare me a bit from all the long-term reviews I’ve seen.
I like their boxy design and saggy bellies: like a potbelly pig.
I’ve mostly only heard nice things about the N52 naturally-aspirated inline-6. Some smaller things like leaks and actuator failures, but none that can’t be fixed in an afternoon by replacing a solenoid or gasket. I didn’t do that much research about it, though.
I’ll watch some more videos on the subject. 🙂
I did have an N55 M235i for a little while, it was pretty sweet other than being a bit too competent for my taste – 95mph felt like 65, and the haters (law enforcement officers) were hatin’ (doubling my car insurance premium).
I honestly think a manual 128i would be the sweet spot – 230 horsepower and 3300lb is slightly more than the power and weight of a Mk7 Golf GTI.
That said, I’m not whole-heartedly endorsing late-2000’s BMW, just don’t want anyone to be discouraged from getting a vehicle that they like.
Agreed. 🙂 Having a difficult vehicle (not that a 1-series BMW is that) builds character, and it also encourages a person to learn how to use tools.
“….and my optimistic view is that most of those decision-makers want the planet to survive”
This veers into the realm of delusional rather than optimistic (no offense Matt, I still love you). None of these executives give a rat’s ass about climate change. They care about one thing and one thing only: line must go up. They’d gladly sell nothing but ICE vehicles that release pure carbon monoxide into the atmosphere if it meant a better quarterly earnings call.
At the end of the day that’s just the nature of corporations and capitalism. None of these manufacturers were developing EVs because they were worried about the future of the planet, they were developing them because they saw an opportunity and a handful of governments that had enough sense to concoct strict timelines forced their hands.
The vast majority of the people pulling the strings won’t even survive to deal with the most severe consequences of climate change and it dramatically affects their decision making. With that soapbox effectively obliterated, I do think some of the EV push was a bit shortsighted. Cars are part of the problem in more ways than one, but they’re a comparably small slice of the pie.
The biggest culprits when it comes to climate change are corporations, the US military, air travel, and countries like China that basically have no regulations on manufacturing pollution (ayyyy we’re about to be there too though! SUCK IT LIBS, I’m about to get the six figure factory job I’m entitled to where I’ll be burning styrofoam every day). Diverting responsibility from them onto individuals has always been a dog and pony show.
Those entities have enough money and power to have an endless stream of politicians on their payroll telling you it’s your fault the planet is burning because of your Mustang, and it’s been pretty effective. Do I think if we all went hybrid or BEV overnight it would make a positive difference?
Absolutely. No doubt. But it wouldn’t just suddenly stop climate change from marching us all towards an early cremation. The 1% and their machinations of oppression need to be stopped too, but a disturbing portion of humanity has been tricked into perceiving themselves as temporarily embarrassed billionaires. If we want to really take a bite out of climate change that has to end.
The one ray of positivity I have is that when the wealthy try to flee this polluted, burning husk of a planet, Elon’s rockets are unlikely to make it very far off the launch pad.
You guys are all pleasantly ranty this morning and make me smile. I mean that in a good way, not sarcastically. 🙂
Oh I am SUPER salty lately.
To believe in capitalism you don’t necessarily have to be immoral, but you absolutely must be amoral. Maybe you’re personally not a fan of kicking puppies in the face, but if doing so makes number go up it’s time to lace up the puppy-kicking boots and anyway if you didn’t kick their skulls in the dumb pups probably would’ve grown up to be socialists or something. The guilty don’t feel guilty, they learn not to.
If we stopped kicking puppies, the puppy-kicking industry would go bust, and think of the ramifications! The puppy-kicking-boot factory would shut down, and unemployment would skyrocket!
Unemployment is definitely not a manufactured problem used by large companies to hold the economy hostage lest governing bodies cater to their demands.
I have to agree with you. Puppy kickers are my base! /s
Don’t forget the occasional feel-good story about the guy who saves one of the puppies from the annual puppy-kicking. Frame it right and nobody’s asking why we have to kick so many puppies; they’re just happy this puppy wasn’t kicked and they feel good about your company reducing the number of puppies kicked this year.
Line goes up! Line goes up!
(the line is “puppies saved from kicking”)
This, I get fucking tired of people acting like the common man needs to change when big business gets to do whatever they want. Until there is change from the top, change from the bottom is pointless.
I don’t even want to dive into all the things but one thing you mentioned stands out to me and reminded me of one of my personal crusades in life:
Could we all not, at a minimum, agree that styrofoam is a horrible product and needs to be banned from existence so hard that no one even remembers it or how to make it.
Jesus, ignore the environmental impact, it’s just a horrible material to deal with. I know it’s cheap but corrugated cardboard is so much better for shipping material. Or just use those thin plastic inflatable bags to stuff in between the parts. Anything to rid us of the scourge of floating, white particles all over the driveway when the garbage man accidentally drops the bag and they explode all over the yard like a middle schooler’s model of the Big Bang. GAH!!
One of my personal achievements at my job is having moved us from styrofoam peanuts to cornstarch peanuts to custom cardboard inserts and crumpled paper. Thanks for reminding me to be proud of that.
I commend you! I recall being told by an employee at a small company that his solution (pun warning) was to dissolve the styrofoam packaging into a big drum of acetone. It was a ‘near infinite sink.’
That’s awesome; it probably saved some money and effort while also being more sustainable. Good work!
Can I work next to you at the styrofoam burning plant? Might as well smoke on the job, screw it. Ooh, can we drink? It’ll be like the heyday of BL and AMC!
I’ve said before that one of the things I love about being an enthusiast in the modern day is all the various powertrains available. There are so many options and it’s fun to think about tradeoffs and fit solutions to use cases.
I think you’ll see regions settling on different options that work for them. It’ll make the idea of a “world car” even more difficult than it already was, but I believe automakers will continue to adapt with flexible platforms. Perhaps some mandates will stay (or morph into location-based mandates like ULEZ), but most will fall.
All that pollution from the Midwest will blow East, yeah!!!
Stellantis seems to be happy casting a smaller and smaller net at their existing customer base rather than attempting to capture more market or bring someone new to the brand.
And then, for some reason, they complain that they have no new product and repeat the cycle.
‘ICE And Combustion Will Never Disappear. Never’
And Hitler believed the Third Reich would last a thousand years, too.
I’m surprised it took 30 comments to invoke Godwin’s Law.
Gets old doesn’t it? Never change internet
Certainly not within any of our lifetimes. Even if it’s just the classic car market.
Incorrect.
Basically every Developed Western nation had an EV mandate on the books, and at the time Tesla was really the only player in the market, meanwhile you had Bears in the market artificially keeping the price of Tesla stock down because they were shorting the stock, and the potential losses for shorting stock are near infinite.
Once everyone realized the obvious (EVs are legally required by X date, Tesla is really the only automaker mass producing quality BEV replacements for your average car, and governments hate repealing shit they passed, then the stock was properly valued, during which time I sold, then the pendulum kept swinging and went up to more than $800 a share, which I should have expected, but didn’t.
IMO, it was always overpriced after the shorting. No car company stock is worth that much, the market is too volatile. Everyone was always betting on Tesla’s non car options (batteries, chargers and home power banks, crummy AI.)
Agreed. That being said I could have profited from the overcorrection when the stock went over $800, but I sold at what I thought was a reasonable price for the stock after I tripled my initial investment.
Yeah there is always a could have moment in stocks. Just gotta accept that you made money and move on. I am currently in a holding pattern. Sold most of my stocks cause we have a moron in charge who is gonna tank the economy. The stock market is running on fumes and prayers at the moment.
That’s exactly where I’m at – but when the (inevitable) crash happens I’ll be ready to jump back in and buy some stuff (stocks, real estate, whatever) cheap (BTDT in 2009).
Totally. That is why I sold mine to bank that cash so I am ready.
Great song on an awesome album.
Let’s look back 175 years to when horses made for 90%+ of land transportation. Nowadays, 99.875% of land transportation is handled by other means, but there are a tiny handful of use cases where horses are still the best form of transportation. I can’t foresee a future where fossil fuels (or synthetic replacements) are 100% obsolete, just like horses are not fully obsolete today.
You wanna talk about an analog driving experience, ride a horse!
People on the old site literally laughed in 2017-19 when I said that in all seriousness I expected to be able to buy new ICE powered cars for my entire life (god willing another 50+ years). I’m not sure if any of those particular commenters made it over here, but I really do hope they reconsider some of the other things they believe with blind faith.
I didn’t exactly think I’d be able to buy a new combustion powered car forever but I did think I would be geriatric by the time I could not.
Though I think too many people got caught up on it being all or nothing. Even if the market share of electric to combustion cars ends up where the market share of gas to diesel cars is currently that’s a massive shift.
I laid out a quote a couple years ago that it was just a matter of time until the emperor’s clothes were seen for what they are…I’m old enough to know a bandwagon when I see one. That’s not to say I’m anti-EV, no, but like many things in life, you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for transportation needs; portfolio diversity will always be king or, perhaps, emperor.
I’m not anti-EV either, only anti-mandate.
Hopefully the politicians see the writing on the wall, but I don’t have a lot of confidence that they will.
Agreed! Hell I bought my wife and EV and I’m looking at one as my “main car” (6-spd ATS-V coupe stays forever, but it ain’t winter-able). I own my house, can charge at home, and that makes sense, but I also get I’m able to take the drawbacks of an EV and can readily acknowledge it’s not really prime time ready. Mandates can’t help that!
Regulations forcing innovation aren’t a bad thing, they just need to be done intelligently. Something like “vehicle lineup must have a minimum all-electric range, averaged across the line-up”
It forces creative solutions for their bulk seller/commuter vehicles, but leaves room for secondary/halo cars and/or trim levels.
To pick a random vehicle. Maybe you can still buy a Durango with a 392, but the base drivetrain will be an EREV with 100 miles of electric range instead of the Pentastar.
Mandating ALL vehicles sold be EV is just unrealistic.
Regulations are an inefficient way of forcing change.
If you have a negative externality not being properly priced by the market, tax the externality, don’t restrict alternatives. Cigarettes are bad, but they aren’t banned; it’s just more expensive and less convenient to smoke now than it used to be. Anyone sufficiently dedicated can still do what they want to, but society benefits both public health-wise and financially from the taxes.
Yes, a carbon tax or an increased gas tax are politically dangerous, but so will be an EV mandate when the date arrives and the cars still aren’t ready for every use case.
If we had a functioning government (none mentioned, none forgotten) they could triple the gas tax and spend every single cent on healthcare and childcare. That way, everyone would have more money to help pay for the additional gas, and the market would correct and those who reeeeallllly want a V10 or a King Horn Edition would still be able to do so.
Of course, if the gas tax was tripled we would only get back 5 cents on the dollar, so I dunno. We are borked unless we can change to a governmental model which does not limit us to Kodos or Kang.
The way prices are trending, I don’t expect many of us will be able to buy any car at all pretty soon.
In my view mass EV adoption always has been – and still is – contingent upon sufficient advances in battery/storage technology. When enough progress is made with regard to energy density and charging speed, people who want the most efficient and reliable transportation (arguably most people) will want EVs for purely practical (read: selfish) reasons.
There will no doubt always remain a place for ICE – vintage, collector, or just plain lovers of old tech (similar to manual trans enthusiasm).
It bears mentioning that as someone who was determined that my next vehicle purchase would be BEV, I just bought a CX-50 Turbo – fully acknowledging that we just ain’t there yet…
Never thought I’d see a K.R.I.T. reference on here. That’s a deep pull.
I always thought the full electrification push was silly. Still can’t believe no company decided to make plug in hybrids their default powertrain. Always seemed like the option most resistant to the swings in political policy.
… I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, “never” is obviously a stupid thing to say. The road to full electrification isn’t there yet, but technology is going to advance to a point where that road eventually exists. It’s inevitable. And in the context of developing markets, they tend to adapt pretty quickly to new technology. “Never” is a stupid thing to say.
But on the other hand… I can’t speak for the whole world, but at least according to my Latin American friends, having a reliable power grid is already an issue. I don’t think we should find out what kind of effect that mass EV adoption would have on a developing country’s electric infrastructure, considering the enormous amount of power that EVs use. And that’s a place where the car business really doesn’t have any part in finding a solution.
To the big question, it seems that a smaller more upscale manufacturer would be the right fit. Someone like a Mazda, but Mazda hasn’t put any money in EVs, so it won’t be them. Volvo would be a good fit. They already have polestar, and from my understanding the Scandinavians are big on EVs. Their ICE powertrains are also completely uninspiring. They should just roll Polestar back into Volvo, like how Ram should become Dodge again.
I work with swedes in the trucking industry I know on that end there really isn’t the big of a push to go EV yet. Though I am unsure on the car end of things but a two them that came over here for some training earlier this year one drives a VW golf and the other lives close to work so bikes or takes public transit (europe for you haha)
Well, the Mazda MX-30 cost them something to engineer and produce, even if they only made 600 of them in the states. Short range EV for the price, but I somehow still want one. 🙂
That’s tough to say, I guess in the US it was Fiat, but in Italy they’re still making gas cars. If we’re talking big manufacturers, not anyone that makes trucks or Escalades and Escalade equivalents. Maybe like a Renault or again Fiat, a mainly non-truck brand that makes smaller economical cars.
As for the rapid electrification, it is very country based, Norway is at 89%, much of Europe is making big headway as their infrastructure is building out.
The US is a very large country, even though we have the capability for the infrastructure, we’re also very big, with vast swaths of nothing between the somethings where most people live, and the thought of just getting in your car and driving from one side to the other is a very American thing. It will still be several years before the EV infrastructure matches the gas infrastructure, where you don’t have to plan your route when going on a 500+ mile trip. People dump on Tesla because of the crazy guy who funded it and keeps being crazy, but they really had it right with building out the charging network while selling the cars, nobody was going to do it for them, and it’s what was needed. I really feel bad for the engineers at Tesla and wonder how big it could be without the craziness.
At home we have all EV cars currently, but am still considering something like a PHEV Outlander when the lease on our Prologue is up, just in case I want to take I-40 from NC to as far as it’ll go west for a couple weeks, and when the fuel gets low just stop at the next off ramp to refill, when you can do that in an EV, and EVs reach cost parity with gas(which if gas car prices keep going up they will soon), then things will really take off.
Anecdotally I see quite a few Wrangler 4Xes around, so I thought the Gladiator version might be popular. But yeah, making a niche version of a not great selling vehicle probably isn’t smart.
Also anecdotally, the only person I know who had a 4Xe had some major problems under warranty and sold it before the warranty expired and got a Rivian instead.
I also see a lot of 4Xe’s but I think that’s only because someone wanted a Wrangler, saw a deeply-discounted one, and didn’t know/care that it was a PHEV.
I have yet to hear anything but horror stories about 4Xe reliabiltity, constant warranty claims, long parts lead times, and constant bugs that strand owners. Couple that with what I’ve heard indirectly from Stellantis engineers that have said the functional safety is less than robust, on top of regular stellantis unreliability, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Also they depreciate like crazy, just yesterday Cars and Bids just sold a 4k mile 2025 Wrangler 4Xe for 33k on a 61k sticker. Nearly $7/mile to drive a Jeep with cloth seats.
Sounds about right. Given that it’s a recent Stellantis product and all…
It’s a weird switch to go from crowing that the Wrangler 4xe was one of the most popular PHEVs to saying no one would buy the Gladiator 4xe, but I suppose a lot of those Wrangler sales were due to the EV tax credit and aggressive lease deals.
Also, the Wrangler 4xe just isn’t great. A lot of reported problems, crappy fuel efficiency after you deplete the short EV range…so I can see them deciding it’s not worth it and blaming the market.
Anyone who buys a Wrangler for fuel economy is doing it wrong.
Everyone says that abut any type of truck or 4X4. BUT, if I’m buying a Wrangler, F150, 4Runner, etc, why would I NOT want it to get the best possible mileage?
Merging capabilities for the freeway. Better torque for rock hopping. Easier to do a field repair.
Hybrids tend to have more HP/TQ than their ICE counterpoints. I forget the stats on the 4XE, but a F150 hybrid has 430hp/500+ ft lbs and is nearly as quick as a Raptor R.
I’ll agree with the field repair in principle, but realistically, nobody is doing an easy field repair on a modern ICE vehicle either.
Hmm. We should test that theory. You may be right.
Let’s watch some Jeep jamboree Rubicon runs and find out.
If I’m buying a PHEV Wrangler, I’d like to expect better fuel economy when they add a battery than I would get with the engine by itself, but the PHEV running in hybrid mode gets the same 20 mpg as the 4 cylinder gets without the added complexity of the battery.
I’m not asking for Prius efficiency, just a little better with the added battery than without. I don’t think that’s a big ask.
That’s a fair expectation and brings up the question of what is a little better? One mpg better? Two? That would be all I’d expect from the design and goals of this rig.
I had this same discussion with a dad decades ago when he scoffed at the mileage difference between the Wrangler and a Kia SUV.
He got really quiet when I pointed out the Jeep tires being twice as wide, creating more rolling resistance; the higher ground clearance and lack of chin spoiler allowing the air to tumble through the undercarriage instead of being diverted away from it; and that the Jeeps gearing was set up for low end torque and not commuting.
The Wrangler is a Jeep to do Jeep things with. Commuting is down on that list.
I think the best comparison is probably the Toyota Tacoma. Similarly, they didn’t prioritize efficiency, but 22 in the ICE and 25 in the hybrid feels like it’s appropriate for that use case.
If the 4xe got 22 instead of 20, I think that would feel reasonable to me. Not a fuel sipper, but a noticeable improvement over the standard 4 cylinder. Even 1 mpg better, though, would at least feel like it’s doing more than just lugging around the battery.
I can get behind that.
At one time, the cheapest way to get a higher end Wrangler was to get the 4XE version. For a while they were one of the top selling PHEV’s.
I’m in CA and have seen what seems to me a lot of Wrangler 4XEs around.
I see quite a few in MA and RI too. The blue recovery hooks and badging make them easy to spot.
You’re in CA, right? I doubt if it’s still the case, but for a while in recent years, Stellantis was only allocating the 4Xe models to dealers in California. That is, if you wanted to walk onto the lot and drive out in a new Jeep, if it was a model with a 4Xe trim, that was all you were going to find. If you wanted something else, you had to order, or work with a dealer to transfer stock from out of state.
Yep, and I did suspect being in CA had something to do with it.
Ditto. I have to say whenever I’ve seen one driving, even just crawling through traffic, I still hear the ICE on.
I have said it in the past, but the truth is that effort needs to be put into development, production, and scaling synthetic fuels. The reason why this is so important is not because combustion cars will die so slowly, it’s that SO MANY other industries rely on fossil fuels and combustions engines to a much higher degree. Air travel is the perfect example of this. Yes electrified aviation is making huge strides, but is so so so much farther away from full electrification or even hybridization than cars/trucks/etc. making an EV Cesna replacement and making an EV 787 replacement are a gigantic gulf apart, far far harder than the delta between a sedan and a semi.
This is not even discussing the potential benefits in airplane emission reduction which are vastly higher per-mile than any recent production vehicle. Having synthetic fuels that can be manufactured at scale with a much tighter control on what is in it has far better emissions outcomes than you can realize, as consistent and intentional hydrocarbon chain composition without contaminants is far easier to burn cleanly, with far fewer side outputs like NOx and Methane, all of which are multiples worse than CO2 in greenhouse gas terms.
All of this also ignores international shipping and cargo ships that are horrendously high polluters due to effectively using bunker oil as fuel. The aforementioned benefits of more controlled, precise synthetic fuels that can be manufactured more cheaply than conventional gasoline would result in almost the same GHG reduction as if every single car in the developed world was an EV. Synthetic fuels can play an extremely important role going forward, and any manufacturer that says otherwise is lying to themselves.
Costco in California sells synthetic diesel (not the same as biodiesel – this is “real” diesel) in its stations (made from beef tallow). The API updated its standards so this is officially diesel just like the petroleum based stuff. It has a different amount of aromatics than the petroleum-based stuff and older vehicles need to have the fuel system O-rings replaced with viton ones or else you will get fuel leaks. On newer vehicles with the viton seals it’s indistinguishable in use. I’ve run many thousands of miles on it.
Not sure if there’s enough beef tallow to supply the whole country though.
Refiners are leaving the state of California for political reasons (don’t want to deal with CARB regulations / potentially having their users or product banned). Most of the sold refineries are being converted for synthetic fuel production
Not when you need to compete with Steak and Shake to get it!
The full synthetic fuels I was referring to are more of the carbon-capture based gasoline substitutes, rather than the bio- or synthetic diesel alternatives. however, super interesting that that has become wide spread, I’m a big proponent of any way to reuse otherwise wasted products to substitute out fossil fuels.
Mmmmm… beef tallow. Isn’t that what made McDonald’s french fries so good for so many years?
California being an oil producer always seemed like a paradox. Isn’t one of the reasons gas prices in the state are so high is that they’re required to favor in-state refineries? They badly need cheaper electricity.
California fuel formulations / requirements are different than those in the rest of the country (and milk, and chickens, etc…). Only a few refineries make it and, lately, it seems one closes every year. While the state regulaors clearly hate fossil fuels, I think the refiners enjoy the limited (and intentionally limit) supply capacity to keep prices high – just like OPEC. So neither the regulatos or the oil companies want more supply / lower prices.
Well gasoline prices are usually around a third higher in California than the rest of the country our electricity prices are more like two or three times higher than everywhere else
California (and some other west coast regions) use a special blend of gasoline that burns cleaner. They also have a carbon cap and trade system that according to the EIA adds $0.54 to the price of fuel in California.
There are also no pipelines transporting crude oil over the Rockies. All of the crude used for refining in CA and WA comes by ship or rail. Same with refined fuels. There are a few pipeline for refined gasoline but not a lot.
You can see this in Oregon where I live. I just did a drive back from Wyoming and stopped in Baker City, OR on the east side of the state (supplied by pipeline from the east) and fuel was $3.49 at the Loves. Two days later fuel was $4.40 at the Loves outside of Portland (supplied by a pipeline from Seattle)
The problem with synthetic fuel is inefficiency which = cost. It takes roughly 5x more electricity per mile to run an ICE vehicle on synthetic fuel vs using that electricity to directly charge and drive a BEV. That physics isn’t changing which means synthetic fuels will remain expensive. While there are applications were synthetic fuel makes sense because the energy density is required and cost isn’t as big of a factor light duty vehicles aren’t one of those applications. Which is why synthetic fuels will be fore keeping Porsche 911’s and Bentleys on the road not powering a future Civic.
The other problem is that synthetic fuels have the same local pollution problems as dino fuel. While CO2 gets most of the press the most immediate reason to switch to electric vehicles is to improve urban air quality. (Which is declining in many cities even with modern ICE vehicles.
BTW – bunker fuel was banned internationally a few years ago. (2020 from memory) It has not been allowed in US territorial waters for many years before that.
Not sure why, but the piece about how ‘ICE And Combustion Will Never Disappear.’ reminds me of this scene from The Simpsons. EVs for some, miniature American flags for others!
Abortions For Some, Miniature American Flags For Others! (The Simpsons)
Don’t blame me. I voted for Kodos.
I thought I knew who you were talking about and happily, I was right. 🙂
JLR can’t make anything this week because they need to catch up with warranty replacement parts LOL
The way it’s going now, it’s anyone’s guess, but I could definitely see Kia/Hyundai going full BEV first. It feels like their EVs are some of the strongest products they offer and they cover several segments.
It doesn’t help that they no longer seem capable of making a nominally reliable internal combustion engine. Once they get over the ICCU issues with their EVs, the sky’s the limit.
I don’t think they are going away any time soon, but man, never is a pretty long time.
Exactly. All it takes is one jump in battery tech, and EVs are the future again.
Or one major oil crisis/war
The universe will collapse in itself but some how an indestructible inline 6 will outlive it and just be floating in space all alone.
I just cannot understand the short sightedness and arrogance that goes into a statement like “this technology will be here forever!”
“Paper is fine for some things, but stone tablets are never going away. Never.”
I mean technically they haven’t. Chalkboards are still used in a number of schools even in the United States…
Just out of curiosity, have you priced any head stones lately?
You beat me to it! 😀
Damn it!
To be fair, there are other examples that do kinda make your point. 3G cellular service is one auto-related example that comes to mind. The cars that have the non-upgradable 4G and 5G systems of today will suffer a similar fate.
Sorry about the headstone crack. I was just trying to find a humorous counterpoint.
Hahah, no, it made me laugh.
Lol
Hard to say what major one. I cannot see any of them really going head over heels to full BEV I don’t think any company really wants to be the sacrificial lamb there. I’ll just throw out maybe Volvo since they are mainly owned by the Chinese also wouldn’t be surprised if Polestar just gets consumed into Volvo.