https://www.thedrive.com/news/vw-is-shifting-billions-from-ev-plans-to-gas-car-development
Another week has passed, and another legacy automaker says, "Hold up, wait a minute," on its plans to go fully electric by 2030 or 2040 or…at this point, perhaps, it's when pigs fly.
Suits from Volkswagen Group are the latest to reconsider putting all or nothing at all into the EV coffers. According to Automotive News, CFO and COO Arno Antlitz said VW Group's investment dollars would still go toward internal combustion engines. gasp
But how many dollars are we actually talking about? A couple of bucks? Nope. One-third of €180 billion, or about $64 billion in today's currency exchange rates. For real?
To some, ICE is as dirty a word as diesel. On the VW front specifically, its EV plans appeared to be in full swing. The Volkswagen brand sold its 500,000th EV one year ahead of schedule, and VW CEO Thomas Shaefer dismissed e-fuels as "unnecessary noise."
Then again, VW is a brand that listens to public opinion. Even without legal action, buttons came back, for example. And despite the seemingly fast start on EV sales, it wasn't, er, sustainable. EVs continue to gain market share, but consumers are buying in at a slower rate.
So far this year, Ford, General Motors, and Mercedes-Benz have announced pauses or made clarifications regarding their electrification strategies. Ford dealers were asked to sit tight on their EV-centric investments as the automaker reevaluated its retail strategy; GM's all-electric lineup will now play out "over decades" rather than happen in 2035; and Mercedes-Benz said EVs are the long game, but that ICE, EV, and PHEV together offer the most short-term balance. And a twin-turbo V8 could be part of that balance. double gasp
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It was never about emissions, a modern day petrol car has 99% lower emissions than a petrol car from 50 years ago. The tech has improved by a lot, and it can't be improved much further. Not that it would matter anyway.
The biggest issue now is in fact tires, instant torque EVs eat through tires as fast as a drag race car. This adds more pollution and noise to the air, unfiltered than any modern day petrol engine has ever done.
Once you drive faster than 20mph, tire noise will exceed engine noise, all of this combined means that EVs are in fact noisier, more polluting, more expensive, less reliable and in all possible ways just sucks.
If anything, regulators should look into shady business practices for cars and punish companies who change designs that used to last forever into designs that are made to break, or hard to fix for seemingly no other reason than forcing drivers to buy a new car more often.
Not to mention all the terrible things they do to the Earth to mine for the lithium.
Electric Cars were a niche market. A Niche Market that’s now been flooded with a glut of vehicles
Bring back The ALH,BEW,ASZ TDI it’s the greenest thing we have right now
To some, ICE is as dirty a word as diesel.But... diesel is cleaner than gasoline.
What's even cleaner is natural gas.
I don't think it's the method of propulsion that needs to change. I think it's the fuel. There's lots of other alternative liquid fuels that could be used that burn much cleaner than gasoline. Ethanol made out of grass clippings for example. Every year people throw away tons of grass clippings. That's lot of potential energy being thrown away.