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Comment by d3ckard | Hacker News Reader

It’s very disputable whether BEVs are industry’s future and your entire thesis depends on it to be true.

    > It’s very disputable whether BEVs are industry’s future

As a technology, ICE is pretty much close to its peak. It's very hard to imagine significant improvements in ICE as far as efficiency, weight, and power output goes.

The same cannot be said for batteries and electric motors. We are still quite far from technological limits for the platform. It doesn't seem disputable at all that a platform that can still evolve and improve with significant room for growth will eventually overtake one that has peaked.

Also, oil will only get more expensive in the long term, and electricity is going to get cheaper, with more and more solar panels generating electricity locally "for free".

> oil will only get more expensive in the long term

Will it? Oil price will reach an equilibrium because lower demand due to electrification will lead to lower prices, which will increase higher consumption.

There are enough low cost oil producers like Saudi Arabia to keep the pipes filled with oil at whatever the prevailing market price is.

The price of gas is $9 per gallon in Germany right now.

Oil (prior to the current pointless war) was pretty cheap, though. Adjusted inflation cheaper than e.g. it was at any point between 1975 and 85.

> As a technology, ICE is pretty much close to its peak. It's very hard to imagine significant improvements in ICE as far as efficiency, weight, and power output goes

What makes you say that? Jet engine manufacturers are constantly making improvements, and one of the biggest recent breakthroughs has been around using proprietary alloys in the construction of some parts to make them lighter and able to operate at hotter temperatures, thus increasing efficiency. I'm not working on any engines, but from a layman's perspective I don't see why there couldn't be material science improvements made to combustion engines.

Your example is from a high-value engine where the switch to proprietary alloys has significant savings in a jet engine.

ICE for cars? Do you think the same constraints apply?

No, but I think if material science improvements can be made in jet engines, there is no reason to think combustion engines for car are "complete" and nothing around them could be improved. They're much less expensive, but at a much larger volume, and they have at least a few decades of future - even if we assume all of the developed world moves to EVs in the next decade or so, which is unrealistic already, there is all of the rest of the world. Most African countries don't have stable power for all of their populations, EVs are simply not going to work there as the main vehicle type. Then add in trucks, where the weight of the batteries makes them impractical for heavy duty long distance trucking. There are improvements, but it will still be many years before they are available, and decades before they've replaced everything already existing.

    >  They're much less expensive, but at a much larger volume

It is precisely because they are much less expensive that they've reached a realistic ceiling of advancement. If you're going to produce an ICE that yields a 10% improvement in efficiency, decreased weight, increased reliability, decreased maintenance effort -- but at a cost of an extra $xxxx per unit, then it may as well never happen.

As a logical exercise, let's consider what are some of the top technological advancements in ICE and ICE drivetrain components over the last 20 years. CVTs? Nissan's VVEL? What do you think are noteworthy automotive ICE technological advancements we can look forward to in the consumer space? Where exactly do you see automotive applications of ICE advancing in the next 10 years?

On the other hand, it seems pretty easy to see the exact opposite with electric/hybrid drivetrains. Many innovations and advancements. It's also easy to see the roadmap for advancements (see what the Chinese are doing). Battery swaps? New chemistries? Solid state batteries? Compact axial flux motors? Faster charging electrical architectures? Endless space for technological advancement and growth because it's so early.

False dichotomy. What ICEs are or aren't has zero impact on whether BEVs are the future.

You can pretty much see the writing on the wall; sure, one can bury one's head in the sand, but it is almost certain that in say 15-20 years, BEV will become the majority of vehicles on the road even if the US and Germans fight to the very end to keep ICE alive.

Yes, Betamax is undoubtedly the future.

Until recently (and probably with some pressure from VW) everything else was supposed to be phased out in Europe within a decade: https://www.spglobal.com/automotive-insights/en/blogs/2025/1...

Not my entire thesis: It's the content of the article and otherwise well known.

Not to mention, those same carbon emission regulations/targets they are lobbying/fighting against did not come about in a vacuum. The regulations were intentionally cranked up to "unachievable" levels for ICE vehicles from groups pushing other technologies.

The temperature of the atmosphere is not amenable to lobbying.

No it is not. Anything combustion related certainly isn't, as has been proven ad absurdum. All non BEV non combustion alternatives are, optimistically phrased, in their infancy. So yes, BEVs are the future for the next 20-40 years at a minimum.

Edit: clarity

I'm curious, what do you think the future of the car industry is, then?

>It’s very disputable whether BEVs are industry’s future

It is not disputable (unless you're including Old Auto lobbyists I suppose). Without government imposed restrictions keeping the public from buying Chinese BEVs without an outrageous markup (or at all) the ICE industry would already be imploding. The government could and should require that all vehicles be under full control of their owners with no remote telematics required, or even allowed necessarily (and heavily restricted even then). That'd resolve concerns about Chinese kill switches or gathering intel data or whatever. But of course the Western industry hates that too because they want to fully enshittify cars next and turn them into locked-in subscription revenue and advertising data sources. So they can't even compete on trustworthiness. Total embarrassment and also long term ruin.

The present gas price mess and global instability Trump has kicked off is just going to draw an even bigger line under both the personal and the national security value of not being tied to any single source of energy for mechanized transportation. BEVs are simply fundamentally superior particularly in a risky world.

Not to mention, regenerative braking. It recovers something like 30% of energy that was previously just wasted, so in terms of having energy independence, it's worth mentioning.

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