Audi announces end of combustion A4, A6 and A8 models

Sort of?

https://www.thedrive.com/news/25299/volkswagen-says-its-last...

The gasoline engines that debut in 2026 will be the “last generation” of internal combustion engines. Given the lifespan of these models, I think they’ll overshoot a 2030 target. (I will personally eat my hat if they can actually sell a profitable electric Golf-class vehicle in 2026. The margins ain’t there yet.)

I don’t think it depends on the subsidies, personally. Tesla doesn’t have them on a federal level anymore and they’re able to compete against the larger market.

Also, the national security implications for keeping gasoline autos as a primary mode of transport are extremely concerning for many countries. China, for example, will never allow gasoline cars to be part of their long-term future. The discussions some countries have regarding completely banning personal automobiles running on gasoline are serious discussions.

So, I’m not sure one can really separate subsidy or penalty/tax from the overall value proposition of owning a product, and one can’t necessarily count on those subsidies or restrictions going away.

Well up until the last few years there were hardly and hybrids but now there are quite a few including a good number of PHEVs.

Consistently absent was anything on the higher end but now BMW, Lexus, and others, have a good selection that should fit under the hybrid banner. Hell Chrysler has the only PHEV minivan and that is a big segment

According to VW a hybrid is obviously harder to make than a conventional combustion car, but EVs are actually about 30% easier/less parts.

Hybrids are more favoured in Europe because of stricter fuel economy standards and emission regulation as well as taxes on fuel and on cars based on fuel consumption. Being hard to explain or consumer preference doesn't have to do with it.

McGinn made a few cushy positions for his friends and did not get much done. Very similar to Greg Nickels IMO, who was only ousted after his cronies that ran SDOT totally bodged Snowpocalypse, followed by him coming out and saying he thought they did a B- job despite most of the city being trapped in snow for a week...

From the photos and reports I’ve seen, they’re not giving a dime to anybody that needs a dime.

If the vehicles are parked overnight and mostly driven to work, you don't need anything like a level 3 charger. A 220V/12A outlet is probably enough. That won't give you a full charge, but it's enough for most urban commutes. (And making this infrastructure available should make PHEV owners buy less gasoline, which is good!)

Yeah, building out high-speed chargers on every block cannot possibly be cheap.

You could have an extra fee on top of vehicle stickers for EVs…and even as I type that, I can imagine the pitched screaming, from both sides of the aisle. “Why are you suppressing clean vehicles?!” “More big city taxes?!”

> supporting energy sector jobs is "patriotic"

On day 1 of the new US administration, the Keystone XL project was killed. If it's a poison pill it must taste pretty good.

Or maybe do both? I don't see Americans getting rid of their cars, so look at it as harm reduction.

Maybe the street chargers could be run for profit with the proceeds used to subsidize public transportation?

The issue is that public transit generally optimizes for throughput, and latency suffers.

The wealthier people are, the more latency sensitive they become.

The city should focus on what makes the most sense for their citizens. In some places that means public transit, in some places it means EV chargers.

Also, the provider will collect the money, but not actually install many chargers.

They should charge you to use them. The problem is they will charge you way more than they should because of the exclusive deal they have based on the bribes they paid to the city.

In Vancouver BC for example it's common for residential streets to be "parking for residents only" and bylaw officers will ticket/tow any vehicle that is lacking a pass. The pass comes with your house/apartment.

In the US, depends on the city and probably on the neighborhood. A lot of my friends in NYC for example don't even have cars.

I've lived in Texas a long time and parking space in residential areas was never a problem. Nearly every apartment complex comes with a giant parking lot and private houses either have a garage/driveway or the street is isolated enough to where on street parking isn't an issue, but it's practically impossible or at least extremely inconvenient to live in Texas without a car.

There are a few places where parking is tight, like for instance at a university living space,so you either have to pay for a space somewhere or get a house/apt with dedicated parking (a lot of students don't really need cars though) or take the chance that you will have to play the street parking lottery.

Cafe style.

US cities where 'street-only' parking is common generally use a combination of approaches in different areas (sometimes a linear portion of a street; sometimes a 'zone' consisting of a geographic area bounded by certain streets).

Approaches I have encountered are:

* Meter-only parking - reserved exclusively for short-term use, usually in highly commercialized areas; long-term use by residents generally prohibited

* Unrestricted street parking - Any car with a valid registration may park in any space not otherwise designated as off-limits (e.g. loading zones, metered zones, specially designated zones for those with mobility impairments). May require periodic relocation to facilitate street sweeping, snow plowing, or other activities sanctioned by the municipality (e.g. clearing space for loading/unloading moving trucks or construction equipment).

* Zoned street parking - Parking in the zone follows the same general pattern of 'unrestricted' above, except vehicles need a specially-issued identifier (usually a sticker) from the municipality to park in the zone.

* Reserved street parking - In conventional circumstances, usually limited to parking spaces for those with mobility impairments, or some special circumstance (e.g. a city might lease spots to a car-sharing service to improve transport access for residents). Sometimes found in cases where there are parking spaces directly off the street (e.g. "pull-in angle parking") in less heavily trafficked areas/neighborhoods.

in general you just try to find an open space near where you live. some neighborhoods have "permit parking" where residents are entitled to a permit that allows them to park in the general area where they live. if you don't have a permit, these spaces are paid parking and/or limited time parking (eg, 2 hour max).

Please see this https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/OVERVIEW/wcs.htm...

Charging is already not a multi-hour affair. 30m-45m with current fast chargers.

But you don’t need fast charging on public streets, you charge while parked.

> But heavy charging cables have enough copper you're basically leaving a few dollars for every person with a pair of bolt cutters and a shopping cart.

This is an absolutely critical point. We can dream up all the beautiful systems we want, but as long as they have some reliance on a high-trust society, they will fail in America. America is a state in decline; the high point of trust was decades ago, and now most Americans live in a situation where they can't leave anything unlocked lest it be stolen.

A lot of pie-in-the-sky sharing service ideas fall flat when we realize that people abuse shared property as much as they can. People like to suggest a future where electric, self-driving cars will be summoned on demand and show up at our doors, obviating the need to own your own vehicle; but the insides of these vehicles will be filthy, and the utility of having emergency stuff carried along with you (from a change of clothes on upward) will be lost. We can imagine banning people from such a service, but we can also imagine someone enacting a law banning banning....

I keep hearing that gas stations aren't great businesses as they are, and if they do make money it is not on fuel. I found one article that is particularly negative, but not necessarily objective [1].

The closest gas station to me, on foot, has converted its mechanics bays to a great taco shop, its "office" to a liquor store with a great selection of spirits, and it has a full-size car wash operation wrapped around it.

So it seems like the most likely conversion would be that the gas station would swap gas pumps for chargers, in phases. Of course the best layout for chargers where charging takes the time it currently does is not the same as the best layout for fuel pumps, so it will be interesting to see how the transition goes.

So at present all the gas stations that I know of that seem viable are embedded in businesses that take up even more space, and the retail fuel business is just a part of it.

[1] https://www.franchise.city/buy-a-gas-station

Gas stations in cities are being converted to apartment/condo complexes, not EV charging stations. The economics just don't allow wasting prime real estate on something like a EV charging station.

Given property tax rates, charging times have to drop pretty drastically, and they'll need a massive increase in power supply to handle the 15-20 cars supercharging simultaneously.

Gas stations currently make very little to almost nothing actually selling gas (something like 5-25 cents a gallon last I had heard). Almost all of their income is from also acting as a convenience store for snacks and drinks. They need people in and out as quick as possible, not loitering around for half an hour.

Basically, if charging time dropped to the 5 minute range, sure. I would hate to have to use one, though, given how busy gas stations already are during the day around here.

I would like to take that vision of the future you mention and add to it the concept of vertically stacking the fast-charging cars two or three vehicles high to double/triple your customer density. When you picture it mentally you can begin to see the financials start to make sense. If the underground fuel tanks can be properly decontaminated and repurposed as storage for uhhm storage batteries you have maximised your revenue generating space.

Being able to supply the “Ooomph” to fast charge 6 or 10 cars with a 5 minute vehicle turn around ( a la Tesla’s fast chargers) but also triple stacked with cars (hydraulic ramps, customer disembarks and uses the time to pay or shop). Chuck in the ‘free' storage space for your ballasting batteries and I can see a great market for buying up old gas stations located in inner city areas - especially those that are currently car washes, vacant lots etc.

Is there a way of overprovisioning the physical car endpoints compared to the resources available to the group?

Within a parking garage is there a method of metering/constraining individual charging nodes so that the overall consumption does not exceed the amps available to the garage?

Say for example, all my neighborhood household electric meters have some zigbee coms that allow the electric co to snoop on individual usage closer to realtime. Do EVs not have a method for the charger to understand the EV's % of full charge?

Heh, writing about "EV cars* on your personal PC computer".

*vehicle cars

EVs are projected to get cheaper than internal combustion by mid-decade [0]. There are lots of American city neighborhoods where EVs will be inaccessible without street-side charging.

In response to GP, I definitely expect the US government to take a lead on building charging infrastructure (especially with a federal administration that doesn't actively dismiss climate change). A failure to demonstrate competence building green infrastructure in the next few years will quite possibly lead me to seek greener pastures elsewhere (EU). Thankfully San Francisco included charging infrastructure and street-side charging in its 2019 EV roadmap [1].

That said, public transit is by far the better green tech. But since private vehicles won't be going away overnight, might as well transition them to something cleaner.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/22/electric...

[1] https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...

The city can provide rights to install EV chargers on the street to private companies for free, in exchange for a share of the revenues. In Europe almost all EV chargers are run by companies vs governments - which they must see as a for-profit investment, as they are for-profit companies -, so if it works here, there's no reason why it can't work there too. The revenue the city receives from EV charging can be used to improve public transportation, so everybody wins.

Don't forget EVs are beneficial for everyone in terms of less pollution, so cities should be encouraging residents to purchase EVs over ICE with small incentives (in my city you don't need to pay for street parking).

Pfff, no, not judging from the number of bicycles I know have been stolen.

This is a slightly decrepit stretch of the east side of the city, so, don’t assume “trust” when you can assume “too high to think this through”.

You'd be more worried about the open window.

> Thirty minutes is too long. We need ten minutes.

How is 30 minutes too long? If you plan your charging around the time you go to run errands, 30 minutes is probably adequate. This is especially true in pandemic times where a trip to get groceries is may be preceded by a 5-10 minute wait in line.

> I'd be fine charging at home, it is cheaper.

Good for you, but not really relevant to the discussion of what to do for people that can't really charge at home now.

Since Chevy killed the Volt, it looks like they're focusing on just going straight electric. Which I find unfortunate, I was hoping more manufacturers would take the series hybrid approach.

Yes that's a very good point

The other side of the story when it breaks it's really hard to find a specialist ;(

Where do you find this data?

I'm quite curious, most of my co-workers (and me) drive Teslas and there has yet been any drive train issues in any of ours. Two of them have gone over 500.000 km. But what I see is pure anecdotal.

All I can find is statistics on general repairs not drive train specifically and even here tesla is quite high but not on par with Toyota. Audi seems to be one of the worst actually.

Yeah, that's one of the main benefits of having a car for me, spontaneity. I drive 2/3 miles for climbing, hiking and skiing, only about 1/3 for work.

And I would miss out on a lot of outdoor sports if it wasn't a "sunk cost".

I do think hybrids are kind of the ideal trade off until we have much much better infrastructure and battery technology.

1) You can go electric to work/shopping/city, and only switch to gasoline when you go out of town. 2) you don't need to spend 10k for a new battery when it's gone bad. 3) you don't need to be scared about finding a place to charge.

> Also don't underestimate the convenience of leaving from home at any time in the day or the night and returning there vs driving to get the rental car, go through the paperworks, and again when returning it. It can easily add a couple of hours of friction.

There are some car clubs in the city I live in. You sign up in advance, give them your details/card, and use an app to book the car. They're scattered all over the city, and you book it by the hour and pay for mileage. You get a fuel card, and are asked not to leave it back empty. If you pick one up empty, fill it up, and tell the app and they'll nag the previous person about it (but I only had to do this once in the 2 years I used it). It's great!

When I signed up at first it was great, there were 5 cars within 1/2 a mile of me. 2 years later, there were still 5 cars within 1/2 a mile of me, but the number of people using the service had increased so there was no availability on a weekend.

On my current street there's ~100 cars parked on it, and at least 10 of them haven't moved in the last week (my own included). If we replaced (even) half of those cars with for-hire cars, it would be a perfectly usable system for me.

> 1. I already paid for my car, so I use it kind of for free, except gas.

If you're not using your car for work, then this doesn't apply really. Even assuming you own it outright, maintenance/checks/cleaning/washing my current car are in the region of 30-40 bucks a month.

Don’t know where OP is located but there are plenty of apartments located in low density areas where that’s impractical.

> That said, isn’t part of the allure of apartments being close to your destinations? Walking to the park, a 1-mile trip to the grocery, etc.

It can be, but there is another reason to chose living in an apartment: It's cheap. I live here because it's inexpensive (< $1000/mo) and I can save that large down payment quicker.

My apartment is not convenient: 45 minutes from my work, 15 minutes from an affordable grocery store. But there is a very nice park within walking distance.

> You could look at home chargers around you and strike up a friendship.

This is true, I could. But that's a lot less convenient than buying another hybrid when the time comes. Gasoline is 5 minutes away, refueling is fast, and I only need to do it every other week.

The effort involved in using public chargers as your only/primary source is pretty high. It's not a quick detour, but something you need to plan your day around (plan to spend a while at a store near the charge, etc). And then you may get there and find out someone has beaten you to it. With just three people in line, each charging for 45m, that's a >2h wait! IMO you have to be really committed and highly value the fact that your car is electric, to put up with this.

I live in a smallish suburb, and unfortunately, they do not provide street chargers (I'm also signed up for the city's newsletter and there is never discussion about it).

I checked where chargers are located in my area, and it's mostly gas stations and some shop chargers in the more posh suburb a few miles away. None of my local grocery stores have chargers. The posh stores are too expensive for me to shop at continually - I can't/won't afford to shop at whole foods for my normal food... but they have chargers.

Even if they were provided, I (and most others here) don't park on the street - but in the lot attached to my apartment (built in the late 80's). I'm also lucky I don't pay for parking (or rather it's part of my inexpensive rent).

That's unfortunate that you didn't give it a chance. Next time try them out. My 2019 3 SR+ had a rattling issue with the phone holder mount. I brought it into tesla service center within the first week and they fixed it and I haven't had a rattle since. It's a great interior imo

My 2018 Model 3 is quiet to the point that I will often hear creaks and rattles coming from outside the car. Now when I hear something I will instinctively speed up or slow down to see if the sound moves.

My mom's old Volvo required you to jam your knees under the dash to keep it from rattling.

...

9 years? Tesla was founded in 2003 and released the Model S in 2012.

[edit]

about 15 years to get to the monthly volume that the A4, 6, and 8 are manufactured.

From a glance at wikipedia, Tesla took 5 years (2003 to 2008) from founding to (limited) production of the Roadster, and were under no expectation to get money or build other cars during that time. Then they built what appears to be a total of 2400 of them.

The Model S was announced in 2012 as their first "mass produced" road car (and they don't appear to have broken 100K cars in a year until ~2017), so that's 15 years to get anywhere near the scale of a grown-up car manufacturer.

To reiterate, they didn't have to support other production in any of that time, and they didn't have to make any sort of profit during any of that time.

To compare, Audi spits out ~2m cars a year, and can't just stop selling cars to retool their factories.

Audi sells almost four times the number of cars that Tesla sells annually, and in my opinion it's likely that we will see some ICE models sold alongside EVs as the world slowly transitions away from gasoline engines.

Also, Tesla's growth is not an overnight story.

Some would say that Tesla is still learning how to put together a car.

Leafs are problematic because they lacked battery thermal management.

$16,000 is 4x what I paid for my last car, a big comfortable Volvo.

To be fair, road trips wouldn't suck a lot more, you just get to stretch your legs after 2 hours of driving (or a lot more if you have one of the 400 mile range model S!) I'd hope you stop to pee or something after 400 miles of driving Lol

I don't think electricity will increase in price, but electricity used for moving a car will be taxed much like gasoline currently is. So the electricity used at home will stay the same, but the one used in car battery chargers will be a multiple of the price of normal electricity.

How does $100 even compare? Currently in California there is a 79.6 cent tax(18.4 federal + 61.2 state) on a gallon of gasoline (I googled and it came up with a price of $3.36 per gallon. That boils down to a ~24% tax on gasoline. So for spending $416 dollars on gas, you'd be paying $100 of tax. I don't think paying $100 is even remotely enough to make up for the missing revenue.

Further, a fixed fee penalizes people that drive a lot exactly as much as people that barely drive whereas a tax on the consumed quantity, gas or electricity, takes into account how much a person is using the road infrastructure.

> My Model 3 SR+ doesn't weigh any more than a regular gasoline car.

It absolutely does. The Honda Civic hatchback has 3. cubic feet more cargo room than the Tesla 3 with the seats down (including the frunk) and weighs 600 lb less.

"Federal" try adding all your state/provincial, then local taxes. For me, in BC:

    Provincial motor fuel tax (Metro Vancouver) — 1.75 cents 
    Provincial motor fuel tax (everywhere else in B.C.) — 7.75 cents.
    B.C.'s carbon tax — 8.89 cents.
    The B.C. Transportation Finance Authority tax — 6.75 cents.
    TransLink tax (If you live in Metro Vancouver) — 17 cents, increasing to 18.5 cents on July 1.
    Transit tax (If you live in Victoria) — 5.5 cents.
    Federal excise tax — 10 cents.
    Finally, pay the five per cent Goods and Services Tax on top of the total price.

Adds up to 50% tax ish.

It definitely isn't here. A new Tesla Model S (Long Range Plus) is 89,864 € and a new Tesla Model 3 (Standard Range Plus) is 50,560 €.

If the 600 € documentation fee doesn't apply to the 50,000 € max price restriction, you might be able to get a 2,000 € incentive for the Model 3, which would bring it down to 48,560 €.

For comparison, a new Mercedes-Benz C-Class starts at 38,750 € and a Volkswagen Golf starts at 24,400 €.

I can’t relate. There was a biker that went on a joy ride here at 6AM, entering each drive and roaring his stupid bike. I’ve never felt so ready to run someone over.

Loving a petrol engine is surely some form of Stockholm syndrome.

They're probably downvoting the fact that I'm choosing ICE over hybrid.

For example, I'd rather buy a honda civic hatch than an insight hybrid because the hatch has better acceleration, and cargo capacity while still getting decent fuel economy.

I don't think they're 'associated' with or a 'close partner' of Volvo... I think they're just Volvo, entirely owned. It's just a marketing thing. It's still Volvo.

It's the same company. Polestar is entirely owned by Volvo. Many of the components are the same. It's just a different brand and badge that's applied to some models.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polestar

> Polestar is a Swedish automotive brand owned by Volvo Cars

Seeing how manual transmission cars from the mid aught's are demanding a massive premium (like 100%+ on 1,3, and 5-series), I could see in 2045 ICE cars demanding a premium. Manual ICE cars even more so. But that's assuming they aren't projected to be illegal/heavily taxed by then.

> they haven't gotten any of that value.

Agreed... and I think it's even more the case in that part of the value of that car is the price tag itself and the exclusivity it brings to your purchase. The used car doesn't have that (and it does have the associated downsides of the expensive and complex car).

It depends-- similar to how a balance sheet goodwill value can be interpreted, the "luxury of status"/Veblen component of a car quickly disappears after 3,5 or 10 years once the styling/features change. You're probably paying a more realistic value relative to the intrinsic value of the car at that point-- which places more emphasis on performance/aesthetics/reliability/costs to keep running, rather than status-- because the car will still likely still have the luxury components such as _Corinthian Leather_, ride quality, power, quiet ride, etc.. If you buy a 10 year old Lexus with 50k miles (out of a 250k expected lifespan) that retailed for $80k for $8k, and it still has the same functions/performance/reliability, did you get "less car" than when new, or did you just not pay the status premium? How much does the status premium change if it is $15k for an originally $75k car that has 50k miles and an expected longevity of only 120k miles?

It is amazing to look at the used car market (for likely daily driven vehicles) and see how specific vehicles hold their value so much differently. There are specific Audis that have a proclivity to grenading their $20k-to-replace transmissions at 80k miles, or have a rear engine timing chain that is a low 5 digit replacement when it eats a guide. So these once $80k cars can be had for a steep discount given someone is paying a huge repair bill if it is to still be driven. Even with econoboxes from finance companies who happen to sell cars (think FCA) that have had consistent sludge/electrical/emission issues over the last 3 decades-- the price falls so much faster than an equivalent Toyota. While nowadays nearly any mass market car will be able to run for 200k miles, how much will it cost to achieve said goal? This is not entirely unknown to buyers, so prices do tend to reflect. It isn't foolproof-- companies like Toyota and Honda can make crappy cars, and bad companies can make good cars-- but the average consumer uses a lot of heuristic shortcuts/anecdotes/etc. to make purchasing decisions.

The enthusiast segments are even more fascinating. Certain cars are going to be more akin to works of art, even if they weren't supercar expensive to begin with: see S2000's and mk4 Supras. Even further, some vehicles for some reason are not inherently reliable, have mediocre drivetrains and practical functionality but have a much shallower depreciation curve-- Jeep Wranglers.

The EU is not really voted by the people. Very indirectly at max. And even then there are many people with cars who want to keep their cars but still vote green here. For some obscure reasons.

You can always carry a diesel generator in the trunk, problem solved.

>Assuming you get chargers without waiting, that is.

Which is a massive assumption.

We have line-ups at fuel stations during tourist season where I'm from. So you're going to be charging longer, more often, at vast parking lots of chargers? Sounds pretty bad...