Last week I wrote about how electric vehicles are widely accepted as the future of motoring. Well, widely doesn’t mean exclusively, and there were a few stories this week that highlighted the fractured nature of the future of fuels and what will power your next car and possibly the one after that.
First, we heard from Porsche that they’re dumping diesel engines in all their cars following the emissions scandal that plagued its parent company, Volkswagen. This was especially well-timed because the German federal government ruled this week that city councils were within their rights to ban diesel vehicles from city roads if they wanted to. To understand how big a deal this is, consider that diesel engines are Germany’s baby. They were developed there, perfected there, widely sold and then cared about so much that the companies responsible for them decided it was easier to find a way to cheat emissions testing systems than to redesign them to run cleaner.
The move by the government also runs against years of Germany’s politics helping prop up its automotive industry, which is heavily invested in diesel and could previously depend on the government enacting measures to help give them a leg up. After it was announced that 70 of Germany’s cities exceeded the European Union levels of Nitrogen Monoxide levels considered safe, it’s hard to argue that the Government should support industry over the wellbeing of their people.
And not just in Germany, the Italians are climbing aboard the diesel hate-train and banning them from Rome starting in 2024, which gives owners ample time to offload their vehicles, which are undoubtedly dropping in value rapidly.
But then Porsche said “Oh, just kidding, we’re not getting rid of ALL diesel engines, the Cayenne and Macan will still get them, but they need them because they’re SUVs, right?” About 14% of all Porsches sold are diesels, while interest in plug-in hybrid versions of the two SUVs are high, it’s apparently not high enough to supplant diesel completely. Apparently there was a misunderstanding about Porsche exiting the diesel business that they could’ve ridden to some really positive PR, but they chose to stick to the plan and damn the consequences. So while the rest of the world widely agrees that diesel has no place in the future, Porsche isn’t quite there yet.
Volvo, meanwhile, is making more of a definitive stance on its future fuel, stating that its current lineup of internal combustion engines will be the last that the company develops. They’ll still be around and placed into cars until the product cycle is up, which could be as many as ten years down the road, but that hybrids and EVs will begin taking over showrooms shortly. While a noble gesture, I can’t help but think this is a bit premature based on the findings of that Centers for Automotive Research study that suggested that, in 12 years, only 8% of the vehicle market will be electric. In 12 years, Mazda and Infiniti will have kept refining their already stellar petrol engines to achieve greater efficiency and power and Volvo will be stuck with 2018 technology. It’s brave, but possibly foolish.
Hyundai is taking a different route, which you may have seen if you were looking closely during the Olympics in Pyeongchang last month. Hyundai’s Nexo crossover was ferrying folks around the city mostly autonomously, which I grant is not anything too special these days. Hell, starting this April, California is going to allow fully autonomous cars the ability to operate across the state without a driver. But the Nexo is a bit special because it’s not just a level 4 autonomous car, it’s also a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. Up until this point, really only Honda and Toyota have latched on to the idea of consumer-owned Fuel Cell Vehicles or FCVs, but Hyundai made a good point when focusing on the benefits it presents to autonomous vehicles.
All that autonomous technology requires a lot of power to operate - somewhere in the range of 50 to 100 laptops-worth of power - and that will absolutely sap the life out of a traditional electric vehicle. Take Hyundai’s Ionic EV, it’s powered by a 30 kilowatt-hour battery which could power the average US house for a day. The Nexo FCV generates 108 kilowatt-hours, more than twice that of the Ionic, allowing for greater range while still providing the autonomous tech all the power it needs.
So while the future certainly looks to be mostly electric, what’s far from certain is how the rest of the mix will shake out.