Isn’t it too early to ditch the internal combustion engine?

The unbridled race towards 100% electric mobility makes the end of the internal combustion engine seem closer than far away… at least in certain parts of the planet.

Ford (Europe), Volvo and Bentley announced that they will be 100% electric from 2030. Jaguar will make that leap in 2025, the same year that MINI will launch its last vehicle with an internal combustion engine. Not even the small and sporty Lotus escaped this flurry of statements: this year it will launch its last car with an internal combustion engine and then there will only be electric Lotuses.

If others have not yet marked on the calendar the day when they will definitively say goodbye to the internal combustion engine, they have already announced, on the other hand, the large investments that they will have to make in the coming years in electric mobility so that, by the end of the decade, half of its total sales are electric vehicles.

However, the development of the combustion engine seems to be doomed to be “frozen” for many of these builders in the coming years. For example, Volkswagen and Audi (part of the same automotive group) have already announced the end of the development of new thermal engines, only adapting the existing ones to all regulatory needs that may arise.

Too soon?

It’s unusual for us to see the automotive industry make these types of announcements so definitive and so long term. The market is never that predictable: did anyone see the pandemic coming from far away and realize what effects it would have on the entire economy?

However, even though it seems that 2030 is still far away, we have to look at the calendar in another way: until 2030, two generations of a model are a long way off. A model launched in 2021 will remain on the market until 2027-28, so its successor will already have to be 100% electric to meet the imposed timetable — and will this model achieve the volumes and margins of the model with a diesel engine? combustion?

In other words, these builders who have assumed a 100% electric future in 10 years, have to lay the foundations for this scenario… now. They have to develop new platforms, they have to guarantee the batteries they will need, they have to convert all their factories to this new technological paradigm.

However, the change seems premature.

The world spins at different speeds

If China and, above all, Europe, are the ones that most insist on changing the paradigm, the rest of the world… not really. In markets such as South America, India, Africa or much of Southeast Asia, electrification is still in its infancy or has yet to take off. And most builders, who increasingly put all their eggs in one basket, have a global presence.

Taking into account the desired pivotal change, the titanic effort it requires and the high risks it entails (the exorbitant costs of this change could jeopardize the viability of several builders, if the returns do not appear), shouldn’t the world be better coordinated in this theme to even give better chances of success to the required change?

The change continues to feel premature.

The battery electric vehicle is being seen as a messianic solution that promises to solve all the world’s problems… how long will it take to get everywhere? Decades, a century?

And in the meantime, what do we do? Wait sitting?

Why not use what we already have as part of the solution as well?

If the problem was the fossil fuels that the internal combustion engine needed, we already have technology that allows us to do without them: renewable and synthetic fuels can effectively mitigate the emission of greenhouse gases and even reduce other pollutants — and we don’t need to send hundreds millions of vehicles for scrap at one time. And synthetics could be the definitive kick-start to the so-called hydrogen economy (it’s one of the ingredients that make it up, the other is carbon dioxide).

But as we saw in relation to batteries, to make these and other alternative solutions viable, it is also necessary to invest.

What should not happen is this narrow view of today that seems to want to close the door to the diversity of solutions that we need for a better planet. Putting all your eggs in one basket can be a mistake.