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Comment by cconcepts | Hacker News Reader

Most people remember the analogy that if car engines had progressed at the same rate as computing then a rolls Royce would run at 100,000 km/h and have an engine the size of this full stop. Or something similar.

Ironically, it seems we're now at the end of the internal combustion era and the abacus makers are desperately trying to refine a soon to be redundant craft.

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Unless a breakthrough in battery design happens we're far from the end of the combustion engine era. And with oil prices tanking the price difference between a conventional and an electric car still looks unreasonable for most people.

I think it will be a long time (100 years) until ICE's get replaced in semi trucks and container ships. The energy storage requirements are massive, and batteries for such applications have a much harder time justifying themselves.

You make a good point - small nuclear powerplants though?

While the technical hurdles may be surmountable, the political issues are probably intractable.

About the only viable green solution for container ships is going back to sails. Some ships already fly sails (really kites) to reduce their fuel costs, but it's not practical as the ship's only propulsion.

The best solution is probably to switch ships over to burning natural gas or biodiesel instead of filthy heavy fuel oil, but the cost structure is all wrong for this right now.

More likely gas turbines powering electricity generators.

There is a lot more to come from the ICE when it comes to manufacturing processes and the electronics. Work like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bch5B23_pu0&list=PLHa6PXrV-y...

3d printing a whole engine must surely enable some impressive things. I remember watching a little demonstration using machine learning for the engine timing once you can get the belts out.

Great series of videos.

That's normal. As another example, the most sophisticated stone tools come from the very tail end of the stone age (or beyond).

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