Audi to stop R&D of Petrol & Diesel cars from 2019

vectra

Interesting.
https://electrek.co/2017/07/31/audi-cut-gas-diesel-fund-electric-car-development/

I am sure I also read Maseratti were going down the electric route in the near future as well.
May be old news .:)

Baraics Pollox

I don't know if I'm on my own here, but all this talk of electric cars put the shíts up me!

I can absolutely see the environmental benefit, not to mention public health. I can see the advance in technology etc.

But, I like my cars having the clatter of a diesel engine or the purr of a petrol. The newest car I've owned was a 2003 (and that was a few years ago). I don't actually want a newer car because I feel they're more computer than car.

Now I know there's technicalities in what I'm saying and all cars past 19?? have some form of technology in them but I like my cars old, decrepit and a bit rattley. So such threads scare me :pac:

peaceboi

The change is inevitable

cros13

Baraics Pollox wrote:

But, I like my cars having the clatter of a diesel engine or the purr of a petrol. The newest car I've owned was a 2003 (and that was a few years ago). I don't actually want a newer car because I feel they're more computer than car.

Once you drive a nice powerful torque-heavy EV you'll soon forget all that combustion claptrap.

Sergio marchionne has said maserati is going to be the electric pioneer brand for FCA. Meanwhile in the real world Fiat has no supply chain built up or even possible for EVs (VW realised they were in that position about 6 months ago (and possibly 18 months too late for their production plans) and announced billions in spending). I wouldn't be surprised if Fiat are the first major carmaker to face EV-inflicted bankruptcy.

vectra

cros13 wrote: »

I wouldn't be surprised if Fiat are the first major carmaker to face EV-inflicted bankruptcy.

From reading, Ford don't seem to be in the running either.

VeVeX

cros13 wrote: »

Once you drive a nice powerful torque-heavy EV you'll soon forget all that combustion claptrap.

Sergio marchionne has said maserati is going to be the electric pioneer brand for FCA. Meanwhile in the real world Fiat has no supply chain built up or even possible for EVs (VW realised they were in that position about 6 months ago (and possibly 18 months too late for their production plans) and announced billions in spending). I wouldn't be surprised if Fiat are the first major carmaker to face EV-inflicted bankruptcy.

What would you consider torque heavy?

Inviere

Genuine question, and I mean genuine (even if it comes across as stupid)...but on a continental and global scale, are the environmental benefits really that much considering its one fossil fuel being exchanged for another; I mean, it isn't pixie dust charging these batteries. Unless there's 'clean' energy being produced on a mass scale, ie modern nuclear plants, aren't we just shifting the goalposts by moving from petrol/diesel to coal?

H3llR4iser

OSI wrote: »

Electric cars have been around as long as ICE cars. Many of the early pioneering models were electric, and it was really only the inability to store the energy efficiently that's held them back. Worth remembering electric motors have been used widely across industry for over 100 years, and have less moving parts and less to go wrong than a combustion engine.

Also, the "electric cars will take over very soon" mantra has been around since the 1950s. The difference, this time, is marketing, really; Manufacturers old and new have spotted the potential for a new, fresh and immense cash flow in a market that has been more or less stagnant for decades. They're pushing what are considered "unchallengeable goals" - environment and safety - to create a cult-like following (try arguing with a Tesla fan...) which strenghtens their position. Anyone arguing against is shut down as "living in the past" or being "against progress".

From a purely logical standpoint, the whole idea of pursuing "private electric passenger cars" as a main step makes no sense. Plenty of stuff that should be done first, is easier to achieve but...has no marketing potential; in no particular order:

- Lots of jobs nowadays don't need daily physical presence; Encourage remote working to reduce traffic;

- Railway systems in many parts of the world still rely on thermal traction, mostly diesel; Captive system, planned routes, no need for batteries, total electrification should be the goal;

- Move transport of goods from the road to the electrified railways; Where necessary, use trains that can accommodate trucks on them (google the concept of DB Schencker's "Rolling Motorway") - at the station close to destination, the truck disembarks and only has to drive the final few Km to destination;

- Public transport, including buses, could be totally electrified and should be before private cars; Use the lower running costs to improve service and encourage uptake by commuters who can't work remotely;

- Work and especially school times should be staggered to alleviate congestion on all forms of transport; Even with "flexitime" observed by a lot of companies, workers still tend to stick to the usual 9-17 times, be it due to habit or constraints with the "school run";

- In many parts of the world, especially around Europe, residential heating systems still run on diesel or even coal/turf. Those systems should be upgraded to use natural gas ASAP;

- Some cities should start building up instead of out; Dublin in Ireland is a study case, but not the only one - reducing travel times for commuters is the best way to remove traffic and encourage them to use public transport;

- Educate kids from a young age than 1km is not "a lot of distance" and can be easily walked; This may not be a big issue in Ireland, but in other countries (e.g. Italy), people would use the car for the smallest journeys;

- Improve the impact of electricity production; We can all change to electric vehicles tomorrow, but their electricity is still vastly generated by burning stuff; With the anti-nuclear fission mood sweeping the world right now, it might be a bigger problem than many think.

Also, unless we're talking about super-mass transportation, commuter vehicles need rethinking in terms of mass; The easiest, quickest, most sure-fire way to save energy is to have less weight. It's pointless to make "zero emission" cars, if in order to get 100kg of human form A to B, you also need to move 2 tonnes of metal and batteries.

Once this is all done, then private vehicles should start coming into the frame...but, all of the above cost a lot of money to the governments, corporations and organizations; Electric cars move the cost to the final user and generate income for the industry, so...EVs for everyone! Yay!

cros13

~300Nm from 0 RPM* for mid priced family and city cars. ~500-600 for large sedans.

The high torque from low rpm is one of the reasons for example that the electric ioniq beats the hybrid to 100km/h by over a second despite being rated at ~10 bhp less. And it's the reason my i3 beats my old E90 M3 to 50km/h.

* - provided the traction is there

Ubbquittious

Audi are only a small part of the VW megacorp

The combustion engine has a lot of underdeveloped improvements that can be added to it yet for more power and efficiency

*Camless engine
*Variable compression ratio
*Laser ignition
*Waste heat recovery
*Alternative fuels like CNG,Hydrogen

cros13

vectra wrote: »

From reading, Ford don't seem to be in the running either.

Yeah they're not in a great position... but they have more money to spend on survival than FCA. Ford just lost its CEO largely because of investors worry over their unpreparedness. And the new CEO was involved in EVs before taking over their autonomy R&D.

Inviere wrote: »

Genuine question, and I mean genuine (even if it comes across as stupid)...but on a continental and global scale, are the environmental benefits really that much considering its one fossil fuel being exchanged for another; I mean, it isn't pixie dust charging these batteries. Unless there's 'clean' energy being produced on a mass scale, ie modern nuclear plants, aren't we just shifting the goalposts by moving from petrol/diesel to coal?

EVs use substantially less energy in the first place to the same work because they are three to five times more efficient than combustion. Every liter of petrol is equivalent to about 10kWh of electricity and the average EV takes only 15kWh to do almost 100km at 110km/h. So even on the dirtiest grid EVs are still cleaner. That inherent advantage in efficiency is also the primary reason for the lower running costs of EVs, not differences in taxation.

And while there is additional emmisions from production of many EVs (though there are exceptions like the i3) the difference is easily made up in the first months of use.

Also as the grid gets cleaner every connected car does too...

PrzemoF

VeVeX wrote: »

What would you consider torque heavy?

No petrol/diesel car will ever have better torque curve than an electric car. Max torque value is just one of the factors. Saying that, no electric car will ever make a sound as good as a V12 petrol engine. I'd love to buy a car with one under the bonnet before they become illegal

737max

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Audi are only a small part of the VW megacorp

The combustion engine has a lot of underdeveloped improvements that can be added to it yet for more power and efficiency

*Camless engine
*Variable compression ratio
*Laser ignition
*Waste heat recovery
*Alternative fuels like CNG,Hydrogen

The particulates will get the Petrol engine just like it got the Diesel.
The forced induction engines produce loads of particulates although nowhere near the same level as Diesel.
as a transition you might see naturally aspirated or low pressure petrol engines charging smaller battery packs at peak efficiency RPM but the days of engines being connected to the wheels are drawing to an end and once battery tech is better they'll resent the extra 150 to 200kg of weight that an engine adds to a car and figure that weight is better spent on storage of electricity in one form or another.

cros13

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Audi are only a small part of the VW megacorp

The combustion engine has a lot of underdeveloped improvements that can be added to it yet for more power and efficiency

*Camless engine
*Variable compression ratio
*Laser ignition
*Waste heat recovery
*Alternative fuels like CNG,Hydrogen

The first four make the combustion engine more expensive when (according to the former lead engineer on the Prius for Toyota) 30kWh battery EVs are already cheaper to build than hybrids and most industry analysts expect EVs to be cheaper to build than combustion alternatives around 2021-2023. Battery prices for EVs dropped 86% between 2010 and 2016.

CNG doesn't really fix anything. It's another temporary bandaid on emissions like diesel was supposed to be.

Hydrogen has terrible economics based on poor fundamental system efficiency that's unfixable. It's uneconomic to produce except by reforming natural gas. Toyota pays more to build just the fuel cell for the Mirai than it costs Tesla to build two whole Model S 100kWh cars.... and one of the primary reasons for this is raw material costs like large quantities of platinum. Producing hydrogen from renewable electricity is extremely inefficient and distribution requires a massive build-out of infrastructure and faces many practical issues.
And for what? The Mirai has less range and 4-5 times less power than the Model S, takes 20-30 minutes to refuel at over 20 times the price per km of the EV and twice the price per km of a petrol car.

oppenheimer1

cros13 wrote: »

Yeah they're not in a great position... but they have more money to spend on survival than FCA. Ford just lost its CEO largely because of investors worry over their unpreparedness. And the new CEO was involved in EVs before taking over their autonomy R&D.



EVs use substantially less energy in the first place to the same work because they are three to five times more efficient than combustion. Every liter of petrol is equivalent to about 10kWh of electricity and the average EV takes only 15kWh to do almost 100km at 110km/h. So even on the dirtiest grid EVs are still cleaner. That inherent advantage in efficiency is also the primary reason for the lower running costs of EVs, not differences in taxation.

And while there is additional emmisions from production of many EVs (though there are exceptions like the i3) the difference is easily made up in the first months of use.

Also as the grid gets cleaner every connected car does too...

Cros, that's very misleading. It's true that the electric drivetrain is very efficient 90%+ like you say. The inefficiency happens in getting the energy to generation, transmission and through the charger. Instead of being 5 times more efficient, is really much closer to 1.5-2 times.

This is still a huge gain, but there is no point in over selling it. I've said before, a national conversion of private transport to EV would yield a national reduction of 4-5% of national CO2 emissions.

The only thing mind blowing about the above stat is the amount of change required for such a small gain.

737max

you don't care about inefficiency when the electricity would otherwise be earthed to ground.

cros13

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

Cros, that's very misleading. It's true that the electric drivetrain is very efficient 90%+ like you say. The inefficiency happens in getting the energy to generation, transmission and through the charger. Instead of being 5 times more efficient, is really much closer to 1.5-2 times.

Well there's 2-15% loss at the motor and about 8-15% loss combined in charger and inverter which I'd happily concede, then 3-7% grid transmission losses (roughly similar losses for local microgeneration) and then fossil power plants are at best 60% efficient.

But there's a lot of asterisks on those. On the Irish grid half the power available at night when cars are charging is from renewables and do losses for that and local microgeneration where there's really not a way to avoid the loss and get any of the energy usefully employed or a direct increase in emissions due to the loss matter?

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

This is still a huge gain, but there is no point in over selling it. I've said before, a national conversion of private transport to EV would yield a national reduction of 4-5% of national CO2 emissions.

I'm not sure that's accurate, given the current grid mix I'd see electrification of 100% of private light passenger and heavy goods vehicles cutting the vast majority of transport emissions (which for Ireland is 25% of the total emissions, in the UK I believe it's less). Given the path the electricity market is taking we'd would be unlikely to see much more than a 10% increase in emissions from that source. There would also be improved return on investment for (mostly renewable) energy generators many of whom are subject to curtailment at night which would reduce both the reliance on and cost of the utility-scale feed-in tariff programs (for renewables) and capacity payments (for fossil generators).

Regardless of emissions the transition to electric vehicles is inevitable anyway due to the inherent economies and the ownership experience. It's was never anything but a question of timescale.

PrzemoF wrote: »

No petrol/diesel car will ever have better torque curve than an electric car. Max torque value is just one of the factors. Saying that, no electric car will ever make a sound as good as a V12 petrol engine. I'd love to buy a car with one under the bonnet before they become illegal

I don't think we'll ever see combustion cars banned entirely. And personally I'm still looking around for a RenaultSport Spider in good nick for a weekend toy... but definitely never going back to combustion for the daily drivers.

oppenheimer1

cros13 wrote: »

Well there's 2-15% loss at the motor and about 8-15% loss combined in charger and inverter which I'd happily concede, then 3-7% grid transmission losses (roughly similar losses for local microgeneration) and then fossil power plants are at best 60% efficient.

But there's a lot of asterisks on those. On the Irish grid half the power available at night when cars are charging is from renewables and do losses for that and local microgeneration where there's really not a way to avoid the loss and get any of the energy usefully employed or a direct increase in emissions due to the loss matter?



I'm not sure that's accurate, given the current grid mix I'd see electrification of 100% of private light passenger and heavy goods vehicles cutting the vast majority of transport emissions (which for Ireland is 25% of the total emissions, in the UK I believe it's less). Given the path the electricity market is taking we'd would be unlikely to see much more than a 10% increase in emissions from that source. There would also be improved return on investment for (mostly renewable) energy generators many of whom are subject to curtailment at night which would reduce both the reliance on and cost of the utility-scale feed-in tariff programs (for renewables) and capacity payments (for fossil generators).

Regardless of emissions the transition to electric vehicles is inevitable anyway due to the inherent economies and the ownership experience. It's was never anything but a question of timescale.



I don't think we'll ever see combustion cars banned entirely. And personally I'm still looking around for a RenaultSport Spider in good nick for a weekend toy... but definitely never going back to combustion for the daily drivers.

Transport makes up 19% of national emissions of which 40% is private transport. So the private car creates 8% of national emissions. Electrify that and double it's efficiency would see that fall by 50% so it's a 4% overall drop.

There is much lower hanging fruit that could yield better results more effectively. That's not to say the electric car shouldn't play a part, of course it should. It shouldn't be seen though as the whole solution, as it inevitability will be, in order to get people to buy into the idea.

I guess the difference with EVs and other measures is that the conversion to EVs will give at least a temporary boost to consumerism, while traditional and more effective measures act as an economic drag/burden.

Ubbquittious

cros13 wrote: »

The first four make the combustion engine more expensive when (according to the former lead engineer on the Prius for Toyota) 30kWh battery EVs are already cheaper to build than hybrids and most industry analysts expect EVs to be cheaper to build than combustion alternatives around 2021-2023. Battery prices for EVs dropped 86% between 2010 and 2016.

CNG doesn't really fix anything. It's another temporary bandaid on emissions like diesel was supposed to be.

Hydrogen has terrible economics based on poor fundamental system efficiency that's unfixable. It's uneconomic to produce except by reforming natural gas. Toyota pays more to build just the fuel cell for the Mirai than it costs Tesla to build two whole Model S 100kWh cars.... and one of the primary reasons for this is raw material costs like large quantities of platinum. Producing hydrogen from renewable electricity is extremely inefficient and distribution requires a massive build-out of infrastructure and faces many practical issues.
And for what? The Mirai has less range and 4-5 times less power than the Model S, takes 20-30 minutes to refuel at over 20 times the price per km of the EV and twice the price per km of a petrol car.

As with anything if they make more than a fistfull of those cars the cost will come down to an acceptable level. Since they just spent zillions converting nearly the whole electrical grid to gas during the big dash for gas in the EU every EV is really just a CNG car by proxy. Even if Audi decide to throw in the towel there will be some company that have a few tricks up their sleeve for improving the combustion engine

Inviere

cros13 wrote: »

EVs use substantially less energy in the first place to the same work because they are three to five times more efficient than combustion. Every liter of petrol is equivalent to about 10kWh of electricity and the average EV takes only 15kWh to do almost 100km at 110km/h. So even on the dirtiest grid EVs are still cleaner. That inherent advantage in efficiency is also the primary reason for the lower running costs of EVs, not differences in taxation.

And while there is additional emmisions from production of many EVs (though there are exceptions like the i3) the difference is easily made up in the first months of use.

Also as the grid gets cleaner every connected car does too...

Very interesting, thanks for that

J.pilkington

Like Volvo / uk I expect this is a load of twisted facts to make a sexy headline from Audi.

There has to be some hidden text in that article, whatever about cites / green countries it would be business suicide in a place like the US to stop r&d on petrol units.

Or maybe a case of if it has any kind of electric motor it's no longer a "petrol" engine.

737max

Ubbquittious wrote: »

EV is really just a CNG car by proxy.

No. not in Scandinavia, France or most of Europe off-peak.
I fully expect that if I set the timer to charge the EV car in the middle of the night in Ireland that the electricity will be coming mostly from renewable along with some fossil fuel which isn't as dispatchable as gas.
EVs will be rewarded for charging at off-peak times to make use of excess supply which otherwise would be grounded.
I'm not an EV fanboy and I can't see how they'll be letting EVs connect to the grid at peak hours at anything other than extortionate rates. They'll mostly get charged at night.