Porsche, Ferrari e-fuel push at heart of EU engine debate
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
There is no doubt it will make good fuel for F1 engines and even for the change-averse aviation fuel market. The best use case today is the US Navy wanting to make e-Fuel from seawater, fuel, and nuclear energy which will help carriers keep their air wing fueled without slowing down to take on fuel from a tanker. Most of the serious work on synthetic fuels for ground transport has centered around single-entity fuels such as hydrogen, ammonia, 1-butanol, dimethyl ether, etc. I’d guess though if you can afford a legacy Ferrari you can afford to fuel it with FT gasoline.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetane_number#Typical_values
So with todays digital technology, instead of the analogue world of the 1920's, it would seem the Fischer-Tropsch[2] process has every chance of succeeding on an undustrial scale, bringing vehicle fuel to inhospital regions of the planet, and yet the nuclear industry with notably scaled down nuclear reactors or Small Modular Reactors [3] could be the saviour of the automotive sector, something the Germans have experience of as well, if stuxnet [4] and Iran are anything to go by.
I still dont know why we dont bury nuclear waste using a convergent boundary [5] from plate tectonics. Its all ultimately come from core of this planet, why not return it to the core for the ultimate form of recycling, like much of our landfill waste, and man made waste. I sometimes think environmentalists and politicians want us to live in our waste.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond#High_pressur...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
The problem of building structures that last 1000 years is well within our experience.
I read the news to see controlling human behaviour still isnt.
They have to pump salt water into underground wells as crude floats on top and they use this pumped salt water pressure to extract the last drops of crude.
The fracking industry have also learnt a thing or two ironically as well!
This gives a good example of what is happening deep underground. https://inthecompanyofvolcanoes.blogspot.com/2019/08/content...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128113011/magmas-unde...
At best, it would be like using a dye in water before it goes into a underground cave system in order to trace where it comes out, but the timescales might just be appropriate for the radioactive decay of said material.
TLDR, if the plate is convergent, what could go wrong?
Fischer-Tropsch, while more widely known, is better for producing diesel and turbine type fuels.
Though the same basic objections you present are there for the Bergius process as well, capital intensive and consumes a lot of energy, so hard to imagine such fuels being economically viable.
AFAIU the Bergius process can use any source of carbon, doesn't need to be coal. The reason Nazi Germany used it for aviation fuel was that it apparently produces a lot of aromatics, whereas FT tends to produce more straight alkanes which are fine for diesel or jet fuel but have very poor octane rating. Though the lots-of-aromatics approach to increasing octane might not be compatible with current day pollution specifications.
around 65 million new cars are sold per year. toyota/vw do 10m each year each.
sales of super sports cars (ferrari, mclaren, lamborghini) combined are less than 20k units per year.
so, only one in 3.000 cars is a super sports car. additionally those cars usually do extremly low mileage of less than 1000km per year. you'd be very hard pressed to find a used ferrari with more than 30k kilometers, even when looking for very old ones
so if we combine the rough numbers (1/3000 the volume, 1/10 the mileage, 5 times the consumption) we arrive at the conclusion that only 0.016% of the car emissions come from super sports cars. the number is so low it is basically meaningless, especially since private transport is not a huge percentage of emissions to begin with. for the climate it would be better to upgrade a single old tanker or steel factory than to outlaw combustion V12 sports cars. forcing niche manufacturers to EV-only is not about the climate, it is about jealousy and malevolence, as is most of politics.
All people don't behave this way. People with limited incomes who drive cars generally are very careful about upfront and operational costs. That's why they are the primary buyers of small (mostly used) gasoline powered vehicles. They nearly all have a sense of what kind of MPG they can afford to get. This is because they have higher energy burden.
The people who make the choice of buying an inefficient (usually larger) car are usually buying more expensive cars, and are those who have enough income that energy costs aren't a significant burden for them.
New and used EVs aren't yet affordable for the former group, but when that happens, lower income people will make pretty rational choices about operational costs.
Sometimes people make "unrational" choices solely because of something more immediate to them.
Honestly, everything about that purchasing experience has taught me to steer clear of dealers unless I'm ready to buy on the spot and have done my own homework.
There's no golden rule about ideal finance term lengths. It could make a lot of sense for an individual to elect to maximize near term cash flow in exchange for a higher total cost.
After all, in car dependent societies the chief value of a car is to get you to your place for work so you can earn money to support yourself.
Car prices also don't scale down infinitely, so it's not like you can always find a practical car for yourself that you can pay off in 48 months.
Similarly, if overall costs were the only thing that mattered, I'd have no mortgage on my house, but then I just wouldn't have a house, so I instead have a 30 year mortgage.
No, but plenty of other unplanned things happen to houses. Otherwise why have homeowners insurance?
> Also, your house is pretty much (if you maintain it) only going to increase in value.
That depends on your timescale. Can you wait 10 years for a house not to be underwater? A whole lot of folks from 2008 couldn't - including people who were current on their mortgage but needed to move for work. Also plenty of locations go into secular decline and the houses lose real value even with maintenance.
the concept of people buying houses and moving every couple of years is something that I always thought strange. i don't care what kind of loan you took out, there's no way that can be sustainable. emergencies happen, and there are somethings that can be done to help, but using 2008 as a torch bearer seems off to me.
Devising an alternate fuel vertical (from fuel synthesis to the engines that use it) seems so damn wasteful and purposefully oblivious that I’m genuinely thinking it can only happen in an attempt to avoid red tape in a bureaucratic hell-hole.
The f-chat listings are significantly lower miles/year: https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/forums/cars.303/
An exemption for sports cars could similarly be abused and backfire if people who would prefer to continue driving their 4-cylinder cars will have only V12 as the only option.
In the 1970s, the United States government established regulations on vehicle emissions and safety standards through the Clean Air Act and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. These regulations required automobile manufacturers to meet certain emissions and safety standards, which led to the production of smaller and more fuel-efficient cars.
However, a loophole was created for "light trucks," which were exempt from many of these regulations. This exemption was intended to benefit small businesses and farmers who used pickup trucks and vans for their work.
In the 1980s and 1990s, automakers started exploiting this loophole by producing larger and more powerful "light trucks" like SUVs and pickups. These vehicles were classified as "light trucks" even though they were often used for personal transportation rather than work purposes.
Since these "light trucks" were exempt from many emissions and safety standards, automakers could produce larger and less fuel-efficient vehicles without facing the same penalties as they would for passenger cars. As a result, SUVs and pickups exploded in popularity, as consumers were drawn to their size, power, and perceived safety.
This loophole has since been narrowed, and many SUVs and pickups now have to meet the same emissions and safety standards as passenger cars. However, the legacy of this exemption lives on, as SUVs and pickups continue to be popular in the United States.
This is exactly how loopholes are found. Forget the spirit of the law and look at the letter of the law.
In California you can register a kit car. These cars are not compliant with many regulations. However it’s limited to 500 a year. Which is nothing.
Ferrari now makes 13k cars a year. The previous boss put the cap at 9k iirc. They don’t make as many as they can sell. Neither does Porsche.
These companies can do just fine with production caps that are completely reasonable environmentally.
The tax is still in effect.
Ferrari shipped 13221 units in 2022 (https://www.drive.com.au/news/ferrari-record-deliveries-prof...).
Porsche shipped 7419 units of 911 in 2022 (https://carfigures.com/us-market-brand/porsche/911).
Chevrolet shipped 9130 Corvette units just in the US (https://gmauthority.com/blog/2023/01/chevrolet-corvette-sale...).
Lamborghini delivered 9233 vehicles worldwide in 2022 (https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/lamborghini-sales-record-...).
McLaren figures are pretty difficult to get. Seems to be in the range of 1500 units per year total.
> Ferrari shipped ... Lamborghini shipped
both of these also make SUVs now, which account for the majority of their sales. i was only referring to their real sports car offerings. those are traditionally roughly 5k worldwide per those 3 mentioned brands.
> Corvette ... 911
not really super sports cars, at least most editions of them. and i agree if including them all we are looking at a lot larger numbers, not that it changes my argument much.
And OEM manufacturers are aware of this problem [1], but has no solution for it. Everyone started making BEVs, so cost for resources went up. And there is no reason for it to go down.
[0] https://www.automotive-fleet.com/157233/market-snapshot-vene...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-29/stellanti...
The problem with cities will solve itself: no one is going to live in a concrete desert where simple food is too expensive.
California will probably be the best off, in terms of a basically year round growing season and a massive amount of land close to large population centers.
If the person affected by the tax doesn't have an actionable alternative to avoid it and the plan is "vaguely make people worse off so that <random corporation> will make an alternative happen" then you have a bad candidate for a tax and you should do what places are actually doing which is "banhammer for new ICE cars incoming in 20xx, figure it out car manufacturers."
Then OTOH, due to refineries working the way they do, if private cars are replaced by EV's, but long range trucking, marine shipping and aviation remain, refineries will have a huge problem what to do with the gasoline fractions.
Consider Vancouver Island for example, a number of small towns on the east coast of the island anchored by larger cities of Nanaimo and Victoria. They were connected together by a railroad.
As the age of cars took over the railroad tracks went into disrepair and were abandoned. We have a 19th century technology sitting right there to fix this problem. The only thing lacking is political will.
I've seen reports of cyclists who murder pedestrians through hit and runs. Sure this is rare, but we need to make sure the elderly are "safe" from belligerent cyclists and their poisonous online culture.
As such, it might be necessary for us all to walk, at least until we can develop practical systems to regulate speeds on bikes and ensure that the roads are not mad max style kill zone. I suggest a top bike speed limit of 10-12 km to ensure safe streets, with powerful automated brakes that prevent accidental pedestrian hits. It might flip the cyclist over xer handlebars but I'm sick of socializing risks and privatizing benefits; if you are in a rush, you should have left earlier.
Why settle for anything less than safety for decent society?
Incidentally, I agree with reducing polluting cars for pollution reduction measures. Sadly that means I don't care once we move to electric cars. You'll find most people are in that boat.
I'm amused that you think this is some sort of "gotcha". As someone who cycles, I would take this deal without hesitation it got rid of cars.
Of course, cycle-on-pedestrian deaths basically zero relative to the deaths caused by cars, so it's a worthless analogy. However, I do like the implication that we should be regulating transit based on momentum rather than just having special status for cars.
The MRI and everything was awful and I wish I had been able to do something to stop it. You are going to be disappointed if you think anything will keep our kids safe.
(Unrelated but in Japan, our health care did not cover the costs for the accident; the cyclist paid us for our out of pocket expenses as the police had found her pretty quickly)
Car crashes are a top 2 (often top 1) killer of children in ~every developed country. Cycling doesn't crack the top 10. Its intellectually dishonest to pretend that cars and bikes are comparable dangers to children.
As a sidenote, disregarding someone's life experience over statistics is antisocial behavior that only "works" on internet forums. You'll find, IRL, that RL stories are stickier and we need to listen and understand rather than just appeal to numbers (especially in post-truth "all numbers are lies" modern culture)
/rode a bicycle for more than 40 years, drove three kids on a Panasonic e-mama chari to baseball games and school. Way worse than a car.
There's a giant class of people that will be left behind if we get rid of cars, and they're being continually ignored by the anti-car movement. The pro bike / anti-car people have a point, but they will have to address this problem if they want to reach their end goals.
15% of the US is about 50,000,000 people. To reduce the fraction, that's 3 in 20 Americans. That's a lot of people to just hand-wave away and leave behind. These are people, not dinosaurs. They also control our food supply. I think it's in our best interest to account for them in our plan for the future, and treat them well.
I do question what my life would look like in that case - for the past 5 years I lived about 7 miles from work. I am currently in a college town while I am finishing up at university, and so I'm now: 3 miles from school, ~40 miles from work.
I use pseudo-public transport (a shuttle that my apartment complex provides / runs privately) to get to school every day. However, that situation works because there is a large group of people that need to go to exactly the same place (campus) at approximately the same time every day. I still need a car, because I often have to go to school late in the evening to use lab equipment when the shuttles don't run.
For work, it's even more important to have a car - a public transport route would likely take ~45 minutes compared to the ~12 minute drive on my old 7 mile commute. For the 40+ mile commute I have now, I'd likely have to jump between several different busses (go from my town to the town my company is at, then a bus from there to the regional airport where my office is). That would probably be at least an hour and a half, each way -- if you could even get the city to run a route from a hub to that regional airport.
All of this is not to mention trips I take just to explore, or to go hiking, or to see friends or family in distant towns, grocery shopping, or visiting a specific specialty store.
From what I've seen so far, the only people whose quality of life wouldn't be decimated by a lack of a car are the most privileged - young elites in major cities who live close to work (and can cycle there), who can afford the fees for an uber or taxi when they need one, or who work entirely remotely. The people in the lower and middle class who commute to work and want to go grab beers with friends a few miles away on their friday night - well, they're either forgotten, or mocked when they're remembered. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth for the whole thing.
To completely give up your car you'd have to put in place systems that allow you to function without it in all aspects of life. From suburban planning to doing your shopping. The amount of work needed is staggering. It took us a long time to see the damage of car culture, and it will take decades, if not longer, to change it.
I'm not actually saying that people shouldn't ever be able to drive, just that it should be reasonable for people to need cars rarely and be able to rent them for those occasions where they do.
But here in Berlin, I already have such a city: a 15 minute walk gives me a railway station, 22 stops for the metro and the bus, at least a dozen sit down restaurants and cafes, 17 supermarkets plus IDK how many corner shops, and both a construction store and a large home electronics store.
Try to do that today in Davis CA, and the closest you can manage is about half that and even then you're limited to one of Aggie Village, Old East, Old North, or on top of one of the shops or restaurants. Most of it has roads too wide to be a safe pedestrian option — I tried, I didn't feel safe, and it was relatively good compared to the other places I visited in the US!
How many people more can we fit in such Berlin?
However, "build millions of affordable houses really fast with almost no money" is something that this city, indeed the whole country and several adjacent countries, have done when they had to, so housing definitely isn't an insurmountable problem.
We're still regularly digging up the unexploded bombs from the same bombing runs that made rebuilding (with no money) necessary, but that's a local issue, you don't get so much of that in Washington or Mississippi. Or indeed (the original) Cambridge.
Wildly indeterminate on both questions because at that scale it is primarily a function of government rules and interventions rather than personal actions — just consider how much money people actually had when half the city was built.
But that also goes both ways, because a single building doesn't need to care about most of the infrastructure — sure, the site needs to have utility connections and a road, but you personally neither need to nor care to make the decisions about the capacity of the nearby sewage farm/high voltage power lines, or if there are enough schools/hospital beds/police stations, or if the Autobahn and Eisenbahn have enough capacity to supply the supermarkets.
I know it can be done cheap because of how little money there was when most of it was first put together, and that other much poorer nations also do many of these things.
But exactly how cheap? Exactly how green? I don't know if your investigation was professional or personal, but either way I suspect you have more to tell me than vice-versa.
The right question is, how do you copy what it does right at the lowest cost in the places that do it wrong?
Wait, what? The price differential is not that significant, there are also cheap new EVs, and driving a 30 year old car with EU fuel prices and mandatory technical maintenance costs won't be a much more affordable option, and there are pollution laws like Paris which ensure that older, more polluting cars can't enter city centers. If new cars become more expensive, it's likely to cause some limited decline in usage, but saying "nobody won't be able to afford new cars" is useless hyperbole.
Both of which are predicated on continued political will.
I can see the out of touch upper middle class driving things far enough off a cliff that populists get elected and change these things.
Mine is an appropriate CO2 price (pricing in the currently not priced in externalities) and then distributing most of the money from that equally back to everyone (meaning those who earn less and also pollute less will on average get more money back than the increase in CO2 costs for them while still preserving a strong incentive to reduce emissions).
It seems pretty clear to me that in that world BEVs are the only viable way forward for personal transportation.
[0] https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/all-cars/cars-under...
Right now EV market is in the middle of price wars that drives EV especially with incentives into very affordable area.
Wind power will drive it even further , Tesla released $30/mo for night charging in Texas. I pay $200-$300/mo for gasoline. 200x12mox10years = $24,000 per 10 years of ownership of pure profit just on gas. I'm not including other benefits. You got a free Toyota Camry ( Nissan Leaf) every 10 years, just on TCO improvements.
There is a program for a compact chinese made EV in EU for $70/mo of lease. Yes its a very cheap car, but still it's a perfect city car.
Tesla on their investors day announced dramatic cuts of production costs, up to 50%.
EV for many cases IS much cheaper NOW. It will be waay cheaper in 10 years.
There is an abundance of lithium on Earth. Increased demand increases production. The price spikes are temporary due to a lag between increases in demand and the production that follows: https://youtu.be/Hl1zEzVUV7w?t=3262
If the car cost $150k+ make it even with rocket engine, unless it safe. Let them pay heavy tax for a "benefit" of emitting stinky gas everywhere around, make a lot of noise everywhere they go.
if there is no car on the market within 15% price range of gasoline one, e.g. the cheapest options, allow them to sell gasoline.
review every year, profit.
With this schema, you can ban any car that is within range of $50k to 150$k easily with no harm to anyone in 2025.
When the ban hits the price of second hand ICE cars will explode. This will mean in practice that a lot of people will not be able to afford a car any more. Now this might be a feature, not a bug, depending on how you look at it.
Rural Europe is a disaster if you don't have a your own transport, as either there is no public transport, or it's atrocious (eg. 2 buses a week in some places).
"Europe" is a big place with lots of differences so I can't generalize to the entire continent, which includes places I've never even been to, but quite a few places could almost entirely eliminate car ownership within a matter of years if they wanted. Whether that's desirable in the first place is something I'll leave for everyone to decide for themselves, but it really is just a question of "want" rather than "can".
I'm not excited by the current number of cars either, don't get me wrong. It just saddens me the working class has to pay the price, again.
Less pollution, less disease, less war, less imports, cheaper transport, higher standard of living. Its a win win win win and you have to have your head deep in far right conspiracy nonsense to believe otherwise.
The EU banned incandescent light bulbs and apart from minor whinging there's been no real problems. This is a bigger version.
CFL's were progress, right?
Maybe. Yet I still think setting a hard clear deadline is a good thing, even if it ends up getting delayed in the end. It creates clear goals and focusses what we want to work towards, rather than a vague "in the future we'll be able to solve things, somehow".
And who knows ... lots of things can be possible with sufficient pressure.
The purpose of setting a deadline is not to achieve a specific thing at the nominated date, but to establish bounds on the timeline for activity. We know well that unbounded schedules fail to motivate action; so we set a boundary and then compromise on what is delivered over the resulting interval.
The 2035 deadline is a forcing function. It exists to frame discussion and to instill a sense of urgency.
ICE bans are already taking effect in cities across Europe. Viable transportation alternatives already exist for people in these cities. As the bans become more common place, the pain points will be identified and resolved.
Twelve years is a long time. The world has changed a lot since 2011.
We are not being led by serious people.
I really don't get those "pro e-fuel arguments" if I'm supposed to forget that we're talking about luxury sports cars.
There will be lots of used BEVs in the market in 12 years from now. Nobody knows how electricity production will look like in 12 years, but it seems like there will be more and more renewables. Distribution grids might change somewhat in 12 years, too. People don't need to charge BEVs everyday, also nobody knows how public charging infrastructure will look like in 12 years, so no problems for people in "old apartment buildings".
Lots of speculation, little information.
Maybe not - but in the UK we know how long it takes to flood a valley for pumped hydro storage, or to build a new nuclear plant, or to roll out new equipment to people's homes (like smart meters) - More than 12 years.
So we don't know what electricity production will look like - but we surely know what it won't look like.
So apart from subsidizing the purchase price which already happens widely, perhaps the government should provide cheap loans for people who don't have the initial capital to buy an EV.
Also, There are signs we've already hit the peak for conventional oil. This report [1] claims that by the 2030s Europe will see its access to oil reduced by 10-20%. So running an ICE car will only go up from here. There's good reasons to assume the costs of EVs will only go down.
Wrt to the grid, the french grid operator RTE published a study [2] saying that they estimate that by 2035 there will be 15.6 million EVs on the road, a bit half of the 38m total cars on french roads today. The study says this would represent 8-10% of today's electricity consumption and would pose no danger to the stability of the grid. About 2 million new cars are sold here every year, so after 2035 the percentage would go up by 1% every year to 20% or so. A challenge but definitely feasible.
1: https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/oil-what-are-the-risk... 2: https://www-rte--france-com.translate.goog/actualites/develo...
Thing is that there is more than 50% people in EU who has no place to charge at home, because they are living in apartments. SO they will be charging on expensive Fast DC chargers. It will be more expensive than owning an ICE and also massively less comfortable because you will be waiting on car to get charged, thus wasting your time.
You typically have less car ownership in cities though...
Why should it be even the case? Why should employer pay for building chargers, maintaining it and paying bills?
EVs are already cheaper and better, they're only going to get more so. Business cost savings will drive the transition.
e-fuels will be a big thing for long distance air travel and similar tech for chemical feedstocks but everyone else has better options already.
"affordable cars" is way below "habitable planet" in my prio list.
Luxury car brands do not deserve any special treatment.
As for all the same tired debates on HN about cars, it is so simple. Average people in the city do not need a car if the city is properly and humanely designed. Yes some workers, industries and people outside cities still require vehicles, that is not the debate. Majority of urban life should be free from pointless poisonous car driving. Luxury SUVs and sports cars are definitely something that could be curtailed.
The technocrats in Brussels are way out of their mind if they think the average European citizen will be able to afford purchasing a new EV in 10 years, and then to purchase a battery/a new EV every other 8-10 years.
And then they'll complain of how come the "populists are taking our votes!".
Will it make new EV cars massively cheaper? I think it's very improbable.
Will it make replacing worn-out batteries economically viable? I think there is hope.
12 years ago, the $30k nissan leaf had a range of 85 miles in a 24kWh battery. A 2023 nissan leaf is $28k, with a 200+ mile advertised range and a 40kWh battery. If you're willing to inflation adjust a little, a $38k nissan leaf today comes with a 60 kWh battery.
12 years before that, we're talking about cars getting 30mpg running on Petrol/Diesel, and we were on euro 2 standards. 12 years is an eternity in technology.
The charging infrastructure is a fun issue, but it's a separate issue.
Parent post makes none of the above claims. You're creating a straw-man.
This article [0] (apolgoies but I'm in the UK so not familiar with the state in the US) talks about the energy mix in 2010 (13 years ago, so close). Wind power could support up to 5.4 GW in 2010 in the UK, and by various sources itcan now do ~25GW. (Today is a strange day, there's a cold snap and we've fired up backup coal stations for the first time in years.).
Grid infrastructure, and consumer interaction with supplier has had enormous changes in that time. In the last 12 months, suppliers have started running schemes where they adjust demand by paying you to reduce usage during peak times [1], introducing day ahead tarriffs [2], and rollig out smart meters which provide usage in 30 minute windows. There are power diverters, and various devices available which hook up to live pricing, and can decide what to do at various points in the day, e.g. divert your solar PV into heating your hot water tank rather than selling it back to the grid.
The movement here _is_ slower, but it _is_ happening.
[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
[1] https://octopus.energy/saving-sessions/
[2] https://octopus.energy/help-and-faqs/articles/what-is-a-flex...
[3]
I do'nt really understand the point you're making. From the article you've shared,
> Combining wind with other renewable resources such as solar, hydropower and the ability to smartly manage our electricity demand will be critical at times like this summer when the wind is not blowing.
Which is pretty much exactly what is happening. We're wind heavy because it makes sense to be here, but if we were closer to the equator it would make sense to be solar heavy, for example.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: only if a skunkworks effort takes place to reverse engineer and open source the low-level controllers/ECUs in these vehicles. Manufacturers have no incentive to reduce the “planned obsolescence” EV cars come with by design today. If you want to use future battery tech in a car of today’s vintage, you’re not going to get a manufacturer-sanctioned option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery
The sodium-ion battery (NIB or SIB) is a type of rechargeable battery that uses sodium ions (Na+) as its charge carriers. Its working principle and cell construction are almost identical with those of lithium-ion battery (LIB) types, but replace lithium with sodium.
You can buy a car with this battery type already:
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2023-02-27/volkswagen-jac-ventu...
We already do [0].
I’m not sure where you are getting it from that this isn’t happening. I mean, it has to happen. Also, E-Fuels aren’t an alternative since they are even more expensive.
I'm sure they have nice fluffy press releases about an EV future but look at the investments they're making.
They're all still investing in new gas engine architectures for commercial vehicles (so like minivans on up to medium duty trucks) because they looked at the state of diesel tech and emissions rules, looked at the state of gas engine tech and emissions rules and looked at the state of battery tech and decided that the box van of the future was gonna have a gas engine option.
Those who wouldn't be buying a new car in 10 years, won't - nobody is taking away the existing cars, they'll keep using them until they can or need a new car, and that one will be an EV.