Noise Is Now The Only Reason To Cling Onto Internal Combustion
There’s nothing quite like the organic noise of a wonderful petrol engine. Whether your dish du jour is a woofly twin-turbo V8, a furious N/A V10 or a melodious, soulful V12 – or any one of a dozen different particularly sonorous engine configurations – nothing can replace the sound of your favourite engines under load.
My hand is up; I’m guilty as charged. At CT we do like to make a fuss about that. From the 4.7-litre Maserati V8 in the old GranCabrio to today’s bombastic blown 4.0-litre AMG flagship, I’ve not been shy about placing noise as the one reason why EVs can’t replace petrol-driven sports cars.
And yet… even to we most die-hard supporters of good ol’ suck-squeeze-bang-blow, the list of arguments in favour of turning liquidised ancient dead things into forward motion is growing bum-troublingly thin.
Earlier this week we reported on how the Volkswagen ID R completed its bonkers 6m 05s lap of the Green Hell at an energy usage equivalent of 17mpg; about the same as what an M3 will give you on a quick blast to and from the shops. The more you think about it, the more amazing it becomes.
For a car as rampantly quick as the ID R to make a circuit of such a fuel-hungry track using so relatively little energy is a brutal uppercut to the jaw of internal combustion. All of a sudden we’re reaching a technological event horizon whereby electric power can give more real-world speed, with better refinement, in a way that’s (on the face of it) much kinder to the planet. Not just that, though: the key buzzword of the 2010s has been efficiency, and in that respect the ID R represents a quantum leap.
Let’s take a flight of fancy: imagine owning a car that would hit 62mph in around 5.5 seconds, carry you to work in near-silent comfort, be kinder to the planet and achieve a financial equivalent of 100mpg or more. Now realise that the Tesla Model 3 already offers that. Such a combination is going to be prohibitively expensive for most of us for the time being, but when the classifieds start to fill up with BEVs in a few years… well, could you really resist?
No manufacturer has yet come up with a solution to the noise issue; or lack thereof. Formula E still sounds about as exciting as a wholemeal loaf, and to anyone for whom emotive noise is an integral part of the way they enjoy cars, it’s still a gaping hole in the new kids’ arsenals. But prices are creeping down, and now that BEVs can offer so much of everything else, for how long can we realistically clutch at that one remaining straw?
Comments
i mean, until someone manages to design a trick manual gearbox for electric cars (ZF already has a 2-speed automatic coming), or even just make electric cars lighter and more agile
i wouldn’t even care about sound
The new Copo from Chevy has an electric motor that bolts directly to the transmission. It shifts through gears just as a petrol engine does.
Pagani is said to investing in that idea of a manual gated shifter EV. So their next EV which would come around 2021 or 2022 will probably be a manual gated EV hypercar.
I’ve got an electric car with a manual transmission. I just leave it in second gear, shifting doesn’t gain anything but taking that smooth and predictable acceleration and making it jerky. That weight would be better used to double up the motor capacity.
The technology still isn’t ready.
They keep using lithium batteries, look at the latest motoE incident where a bike caught fire, it already happened and all the bikes where involved, the championship almosto got cancelled.
Also an i8 caught fire in a dealer, lots of teslas did, i3 and hyundai kona did too, the kona wasn’t even connected to anything.
Electric cars are dangerous, there are better technologies but they’re not ready like solid state batteries.
Until then I won’t consider an EV because I don’t want to wake up in a burning house.
username checks out
In the United States there are 30 vehicle fires per hour on average. Driving around with several gallons of highly volatile and highly inflammable liquid is so much safer!
When the technology is there, I’ll be in. I already want to convert my old Mazda to an EV, but at this stage I’d get half the range from a charge I do from a tank of petrol, and there’s no infrastructure for it in Australia.
How are you posting without electricity? Did you stuff this post into a kangaroo pouch and slap it on the butt?
yes and lack of tactility. but i don’t really need a reason, i just like it. also car culture is rooted in ice so we’ve been conditioned to it. I also don’t like or trust too much tech, whether its a washing machine or a car. Performance modding is going to be boring as well
but street racing won’t draw as much attention
The only reason? Really? The life expectancy of a Tesla’s batteries is 2 years… 2! Now I’m sorry, but that isn’t exactly progress. Especially when a fuel tank on a modern car will last the life time of the vehicle. Petrol still has a long way to go. Battery electric cars will be short lived…
The life expectancy is not two years it has been proven that it is quite a bit longer. Although I agree that they have a ways to go, they are the future and will not be short lived.
Care to share any evidence you have for your statement? I have some evidence that you are wrong! https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/28/350000-miles-in-a-tesla-model-x-just-18000-in-maintenance/
What the hell are you talking about? Two years?! Teslas come with an unlimited mile / 8 year battery warranty. There are plenty of people driving around with 4+ year old, 150,000 mile batteries that still hold over 90% of their original capacity. Like me. Hell there are v1 original roadsters still doing their thang.
We can use Biofuel which is a 0 emissions fuel for ICE.So there is a reason to defend them.Another reason to defend them is the fact that ICE is being scapegoated so the farming industry doesn’t have to stop breeding as many cows as they are which would definitely be the biggest cause of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.
As much as I want to use ethanol it isn’t practical on a global setting
“Biofuels could have near-zero emissions overall”. It is not and will not be a 0 emissions option for ICE. Personally i believe that Hydrogen fuel cells will be the way forward with a large investment on the infrastructure. There are many reasons for this, but the main one is that Lithium is a rare resource and will only get more expensive, therefore EVs will only get more expensive without an alternative battery.
The biggest proof of concept is that Japan is investing heavily in hydrogen instead of electric.
We have at least LMP1 and F1 to prove that hybrids are still faster than fully electric. Even 2004 F1 are faster than any electric cars just with combustion
What about working on your car/diagnosing a problem yourself?
Do it. You know that there is a huge community of people who build their own EVs, right? They take classics, or kit cars and combine them with junkyard Tesla motors or DIY batteries. For every component out there someone has hacked it, replaced the brain board of reverse engineered the CAN signals. There is a guy taking $200 nissan leaf motors and pushing over 400HP through them. You just are afraid to learn new stuff. Not everyone is
There are more reasons to cling to ICE than just sound. There’s the feeling of the engine characteristics (If you enjoy those sorts of feelings), Working on the engine (again, only if you are into that stuff) and pleasure in general (depends on if you personally derive pleasure from ICE)
In the future I think ICE will become a toy or a hobby for those that still like them.
And the range(usually enough to drive through entire countries without refueling) which makes ICE better if you travel long distances often
The range on my wrx isn’t much better than a model 3 lol
I feel you bro
but it takes you 5 minutes to fill up an empty tank, vs hours to charge a model 3 to 100%
Topics
Sponsored Posts