VW brand joins Audi in ending combustion engine development

VW already has a huge range of ICEs in their portfolio which are shared among their subsidiaries, especially VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda. Even if they all stop ICE development now, they have probably 5+ years until their engines would be out of date, so it makes absolute sense to shift their development focus to electronic drivetrains and use the products you already have on hand.

Well, it's a huge decision and my guess is that they want to have as much exposure as they can get from this decision.

They're the world's second largest automaker (and they tend to switch places with the first one, Toyota, periodically): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry#By_manufac...

And they've just announced they're going to invest $86 bn in electric vehicles over the next 5 years: https://www.reuters.com/article/volkswagen-strategy-idUSKBN2...

They've just launched a modular electric platform that will probably be used in tens if not hundreds of new models (in the US only VW ID.4 has been launched so far).

Yeah, this title makes it sound like they are different entities. Audi is under the VW group, basically the same company, with different branding and product offering.

> Perhaps Porsche, Bugatti and Lamborghini will take longest to admit it?

Porsche will be the first, as they have the Taycan, the platform is already being exported to Audi and (my guess) will be the basis of a next gen Lamborghini. Bugatti is in a completely different plane of existence though. I'm not sure what will happen with Bugatti but I'm almost certain they will be sold.

As a small volume manufacturer they should still be able to keep producing ICE engines. Their 16.4L W16 is practically a work of art. And because they are that special, it will be easiest for Bugatti to divorce from VW Group.

They should open up the patents. And let other engine developers take advantage of their developments this far.

Very bad for Formuna-* races I guess.

VW was bankrolling engine development for a big portion of Formulas race teams.

Probably a technicality, but Porsche actually owns VW Group, which again owns Porsche cars, Audi etc

I heard in Handelsblatt's podcast a few weeks ago that new Porsche CEO (?) was already planning for it.

They're thinking how to introduce "wow factor" to electric cars. They don't want to be just another Tesla.

Apparently Porsche was always about being "exclusive".

The writing is on the wall. Most manufacturers are at this point actively milking their sunk investment in ICE for as long as they can while simultaneously developing their EV strategy without killing their ICE strategy. A few have woken up to the notion that this is a losing strategy and that they need to go all in on EV. Basically the market is split between compliance vehicles, limited production EVs also available in ICE or hybrid configuration, or 100% EV only cars. The latter tend to have superior cost margins, performance, etc.

VW basically is doing the latter and is now announcing the status quo that, yes, VW/Audi/Porsche ICE development is dead as a door nail. Porsche sales are already dominated by their EV sales and growing quite nicely. I think the Audi eTron is also considered a success at this point.

In Germany, an added dimension is that the unions are waking up to the notion that their companies need to change in order for their members to stay employed. Anyone employed in ICE production lines is worrying about when (not if) they will be layed off. There seem to be regular announcements from all German manufacturers about layoff rounds. So, this is very real for them.

VW has been converting factories to battery and EV production over the last years and they are ramping up volume production to probably surpass Tesla pretty soon in terms of volume sales. Considering the ID.3 only launched summer last year, that's impressive. I think BMW and Daimler are getting worried about their position in the market at this point (or at least they should be). So, unions understandably want to see realistic plans for the future from these companies. As opposed to e.g. BMW waffling about hybrids as "the future" so they don't have to talk about not having a lot of EV production or a plan for fixing that.

> There's no reason we should accept electric cars with complex computers running complex unfixable proprietary software that only the vendor has access to the source code and is updated over-the-air without owner's consenting.

All the other systems in the car require sophisticated integrated computers and sensors - automatic breaking, cruise control, speed limiting, suspension management - it's not just about the motors. I'm not sure there's any way to put the genie back in the bottle?

Become? They already are.

My neighbor has a brand new Audi e-tron. Something was borked with the system and it wouldn’t interface with any of the remote services. The dealer couldn’t even get into the thing to do anything about it. The solution was allowing it to sit, plugged in, for 72 hours so the system would restart itself and update from the mythical cloud.

Tesla’s have a similar reputation for being unrepairable by the shade tree mechanic. Check out Rich Rebuilds on YouTube. His entire channel is about fighting Tesla to get access to the tooling and information necessary to ‘own’ the second hand Tesla he bought from a salvage yard.

Another friend has a BMW that will literally refuse to drive if he doesn’t have it serviced at the specified intervals at the dealer.

These are all anecdotes about high end cars but it’s trickling down to everything. The walled gardens are already upon us.

I can already see the repair-ability of electric cars getting as bad as some Apple hardware. Maybe someone should create an open design of a barebones electric car complete with RPi-based ECM or other open hardware/software. Or have a company do all the hard work as in a Pinephone equivalent of electric cars, a market I could see having some viability while leaving others free to tinker and modify to their needs. One configuration for 4wheel offroad truck, one for street car and so on.

Coincidentally, one reason I like to justify OSS is that when we buy things, we typically know how it works or can look under the hood and check things out as with cars but we can't do so with closed source programs. Why should we start to accept that it's ok that manufacturers think we shouldn't know how the things we buy works? The mechanical nature of cars has given them a more open legacy, well disregarding software, sensors and such, and I hope it continues.

We could try to quantify the simplicity of an electric vs a combustion engine car. Let's count the number of different fluid systems in a regular car.

There's the fuel, engine oil, coolant, transmission oil, brake fluid, windshield washing liquid and air conditioning fluid. Battery acid we don't count as they are sealed nowadays, and you replace it as a unit.

I think an electric car needs battery coolant, I assume fixed ratio gear still has oil that needs changing. Then brake fluid, windshied washing liquid and air conditioning fluid are just the same as in a combustion car.

So I think we got rid of fuel and engine oil, they are the messiest and need most touch labor, but basically all the other was left intact. It's not an insignificant improvement, but there's still lots of maintenance targets left.

Newer cars have more electronics, but that's because electronics became cheap and software features are expected (some even legally required). EV isn't causing this, it's just correlated with cars being new.

ICE cars are already full of proprietary locked-down electronics. What drive train they use is irrelevant. For example, Renault, Peugeot, and Hyundai have cars in both EV and ICE versions, running basically the same software for both versions.

If you're alluding to things like self-driving, then EV has nothing to do with it either. For example, Uber's self-driving prototypes are ICE.

China will build simple and cheap ICE cars. They haven't development much in 20 years.

The only way VW will be able to make money is through 'servicing' cars.

It’s obvious you have no idea what you are taking about. Automobiles are already walled gardens, for obvious reasons. Electric drivetrains are mechanically more simple than ICE, but battery and range management software is very complex. And there is an enormous amount of software required for ADAS, safety, infotainment, cabin control etc.

Sorry, but I don't want just anyone writing and modifying safety critical code. That stuff goes through very extensive testing, and for good reasons. I would not drive a car that was running software not written by specialized and trained individuals and with extensive testing.

The next step is to have cars always log their position in the cloud, so the government will know where you are, that you are driving within legal limits, how often you drive (and it won't be long until insurance companies will have access to it). I think this is going to be introduced EU wide.

edit (it's under guise of speed limiting): https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/mandatory-spe...

I foresee the day HNers will ask "How do I get a dumb (non-smart) car" just the same way people are asking for dumb tv's.

Seconded on the iRobot stores. The movie is very loosely based on the book. The book is a collection of stories of debugging strange robot behaviour.

Even if all ICE production stopped today, we'd have existing cars on the roads for a while.

As EV production ramps up, they should get cheaper due to economies of scale and the technology maturing. Currently the public charging infrastructure is awful, but that's also a chicken-egg problem that will solve itself.

EVs already have significantly lower per-mile cost, so it's only the initial cost that's higher. I think we're not far off from the initial cost falling low enough that it won't make sense to buy new ICE, and then adoption will accelerate rapidly.

Look at smartphones. There was a time when they were expensive toys and almost nobody had them, until they reached a tipping point.

You're already wrong. Electric cars already dominate the sub-$5000 car market in China.

> I get the feeling petrol cars will be cheaper than electric cars for the low end of the market for a long long time.

Various reports estimate electric vehicle cost parity to be achieved around 2025 for small cars, and around 2028 for SUVs (source: theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV_cost_2020_2030_20190401.pdf)

Used ICE cars will probably remain a cheaper option for another 10 years.

I agree about a near term possible shift downmarket, but don't forget to consider what could happen if gas stations started to go under due to a shrinking market.

Ease of refueling is a chief advantage, so if it became difficult to locate gas, and the price began to rise, that could be the end.

Multiple non-treehugger analysts like UBS [0] have predicted that upfront price parity between ICE and EVs will be achieved around the middle of this decade. Add to that lower fuel and maintenance costs plus the likelihood of a rising carbon price and the economic case becomes even more compelling.

[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2020/10/22/ubs-predicts-ev-price-p...

ASP for EVs are dropping slowly over the last few years but it is still higher. But that's not because it's not technically possible to make cheap EVs. Just look at the Chinese market. If it has wheels, you can turn it into an EV for not that many dollars. It's not technically hard to do so. They are looking to enter the European market with EVs priced below 10K even. That would create some issues for ICE manufacturers dependent on selling more expensive ICE vehicles. A high volume market entry could wipe out a lot of cheap ICE cars.

Short term battery supply basically means the market gets squeezed top down. You get better margins putting the same battery in a 30K car than in a 20K car. And since demand is there, you see manufacturers trying to saturate that market before they target cheaper price points.

Some manufacturers that are doing combined ICE/hybrid/EV strategies are essentially pricing their EVs higher because they only produce them in limited volume and customers seem to buy them despite the high price. Also, if they'd price them lower, they'd kill their legacy business and sink that investment. The problem with that strategy is when EV only manufacturers start shipping better & cheaper cars in increasing volume. This is starting to happen and it's a market that looks like it will be doubling every year for some time.

Why do you think that? A standard range Tesla Model 3 starts at 33,190 and is still an absolutely fantastic vehicle. The exact same Tesla that I bought in 2018 (Long range all wheel drive) is almost $10,000 less today than when I purchased it. As the economies of scale improve, the prices go down. As more and more manufacturers move to BEV vehicles, the manufacturing / parts will become more commodity and hence cheaper. Tesla really pushed the needle, but the VW group going entirely electric is going to massively force the issue. Their all electric Porsche, the Taycan, was the best selling Porsche of last year and this year so far. Also now that there are multiple manufacturers making serious electric vehicles, that encourages them to compete amongst each other on price.

All of these leads to the overwhelmingly obvious conclusion that EVs are going to get massively cheaper in the next 2-5 years. One of the biggest selling points is also the lower fuel prices and limited scheduled maintenance. An EV is simply cheaper to operate than most ICE vehicles, and that is not really going to change. Also note that you can get really good EVs used for a massively lower price.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with ICE vehicles, but the writing is on the wall.

In the 1980's when I was in college one of GM's main engines in the UK was basically a 1930's design (updated slightly over the years).

Yea this title is total click bait.

The VR6 from VW was introduced in 1991. I'm sure you can point to lineage with earlier designs, but it's a unique design. The Freevalve design from Koenigsegg also comes to mind.

I think you bring up a good point about auto recycling generally. There is a large industry in the US that recycles cars and car parts. About 80% of a car can be recycled. I wonder how the move to electric vehicles will impact a car’s overall recyclability.

Lithium Ion Batteries can practically be recycled indefinitely. This is a quote from JB Straubel, the former CTO of Tesla and Elon's second in command for quite some time.

He recently founded a startup based on recycling used EV batteries named Redwood Materials and have landed a few big contracts as well.

https://chargedevs.com/newswire/jb-straubel-gives-a-tour-of-...

https://autorecyclingworld.com/redwood-materials-signs-batte...

Rare earth elements are not used to make lithium batteries. This may seem pedantic but the terminology is important. Fossil fuel front groups try to disparage batteries by linking them to rare earths and all of the (largely fake) baggage that come with them.

So it's good to keep the terminology accurate.

> are recycled poorly afterward

Current automotive lead acid battery recycling is somewhere between 98-99.3%. They are the most recycled thing. This is in part due to the fact that lead is really bad for the environment, but also because the batteries are highly recyclable.

Modern Lithium batteries aren't anywhere near as bad for the environment as Lead acid batteries but they're highly recyclable. And like Aluminum and Steel, it's cheaper to harvest Lithium from recycled batteries than it is to mine it.

Electric cars probably won't change the equation much because much of what isn't recyclable in a modern automobile is the plastics used for interior, ducts, cable insulation, etc. Approximately 80% of a vehicle is recyclable.

In a related note I think the space for EV battery repair/reconditioning is going to be huge. All those present and future cars on the road are going to need their battery packs fixed in the future and the manufacturers are not set up for that. If I had $1MM to invest in an idea/company, it would be this one.

It hasn't disappered -- it will be preserved because it's important. The tooling will exist in automotive museums and the expertise will reside in engineering historians and engineering academics -- the first tractor engines are generally still the learning tools for many undergrads. That knowledge just shifts from working proffessionals to another group in society.

A lot of work in this field afaik is about finding new materials or using more common materials to do the same thing. Getting more R&D in this field early is definitely worth the pay off, and the right time as well.

I looked it up "The song's lyrics tell a story set in a future in which many classes of vehicles have been banned by a "Motor Law."" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barchetta

Bill Gates has been running around saying that we simply won’t tackle steel and cement, so we need to go hard on everything else to compensate/get to net zero.

ICE families/generations are quite well defined if you follow automotive news.

> As to what "a new family of ICE" means is anyone's guess.

It's exactly what he said. Modern engine-families are typically developed as somewhat of a modular platform. Then, there are several or even dozens of variations of that platform for various needs, some with different emissions accessories, some with varying displacements, compression ratios, valve/spark timings, etc.

For a tech analogy: it's similar to how CPU manufacturers design a core architecture and then give you varying numbers of cores, cache, thermal designs, feature sets, etc.

"a new family of ICE" is not as confusing as you might think. Automotive engines have clearly defined generations and families of development.

You can think of "new family of ICE" as the equivalent of processor instruction sets. A common "new family of instruction sets" would be something like the development of the AMD x86-64 64 bit instruction sets on top of the original 32 bit x86 set. A smaller "subfamily" or "development" can mean the addition of a new family of SIMD or something like AVX512, etc. However, the processor family is still an offshoot of x86 then x86-64, etc.

In car automotive engines, it's exactly the same process. An ICE engine family can be in use for well over 20 years undergoing iterative improvements.

VW will not continue to push the automotive equivalent of developing new instruction sets for the x64 processor.

postmark: some examples of past "families of development" in internal combustion engines: carburator -> fuel injection; development of the supercharger and turbocharger, and making engines strong enough to withstand pressures from undergoing forced induction; hybridization - adding a battery to the drive train; etc

All of these would be seen as major "ICE new families" - and for example in the VW and Audi world, you would see "families" of engines that would have, for example, a turbo on the engine in a particular model year, vs naturally aspirated only from the past model year car, etc.

In VW, one major family is the VR6 - it's an innovation specific and proprietary to VW alone, and it's been around since 1991, and still in production - you see them still on new generation VW Atlas as a base engine option - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VR6_engine - that's a 30 year run for an "engine family".

The Bugatti Veyron uses 2 VR8 bolted together to make a W16 engine - this is the same VR engine family technology taken to the extreme edges of performance.

VW will no longer develop another internal combustion engine family in the way they kick started the "VR6" project back in the 90's.

A cursory glance at the article would reveal that they are not completely ending the development either, only development of new "engine families".

> "At the moment, I do not expect a completely new engine family to be launched." Still, he wants to develop the engines currently in use and prepare them for new emissions standards such as Euro 7

What did you think was going to happen, though? :-)

If EVs become good enough, investing in ICE at previous levels is unsustainable.

Plus we have a ton of cool tech that's barely used today (steam engines, for examples). That's why we have museums.

They will still use ICE and do ICE R&D. “Further developments of the existing units” will continue.

They've announced huge EV plans. Like "bet the farm" plans. In US it's not as visible because of Musk's Reality Distortion Field.

DACH countries are jelous of Tesla. Soon even children in post-Communist countries will be forced to work for German automotive industry, skipping any education. No other opportunities will be available. (Meantime MS, G, and Big Four salesfolks are hysterical to sell them "The Cloud")

Worth noting that PAH3 appears to be Porsche SE - the holdings company that is the largest shareholder in VOW, not the Porsche company that makes the cars - which is 100% owned by Volkswagen AG (VOW).

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

COVID...

They are "only" up 27% from 14 month ago.

Yeah, there's a chance VW are playing this to the market. As a commenter opined in another thread; new engines are rarely developed anyway and they stated that they will continue to iterate over current set of engines.

Note that there's no word about VW's EV plans besides this line "None of the executives specified a definite date for when they would exclusively produce electric vehicles".

There's also this line "Completely new engines were unlikely, he said.".

Seems like a planted PR piece by VW to further fuel the stock price momentum.

> Now killing ICE all together.

The writing is on the wall. In Europe several big cities as well as countries have announced that they'll ban diesel engines in about 10 years, max. Some have announced that they'll ban all ICE cars in about 15-20 years.

Automotive tariffs are literally made to prevent exactly that. And shipping costs for 2-tonne hunks of steel are substantial enough, far more so than for consumer electronics.