Volvo to phase out the combustion engine starting in 2019

[Doctor Amadeus]

Way to go Ford I mean Volvo!

No seriously this is a great step forward glad I support them with my business I Still hate Quicklane!

[Amalaric]

...have you ever driven anywhere in California? Or anywhere in the U.S.? Very, very few people would buy a car with that kind of limitation on it. I know for a fact I wouldn't. Having to drive to Sacramento and back is a regular thing, and anyone driving 22 mph on I5 would be given a ticket, assuming they survive long enough to receive said ticket.

Fine! You have a 330 mile range at 50 miles per hour.

[Svad1287]

But the brand Volvo will still have the "civil servant" stigma attached to it.

At least, that's how Volvo is seen here. A boring car for boring people.

You clearly havent seen "I Kina Spiser de hunde" "In china, they eat dogs"

3:15 - and the Volvo goes berserk xD

[Puri]

You have over a 450 mile range at 22 miles per hour and who really needs to go any faster?

This graph only shows the range with a constant speed. In reality you have to break and accelerate all the time, severly reducing the range.

[Tackhisis]

People forget that Tesla is weighting more than 2 tons, which is a big NO for a city car.

[Puri]

The typical range of a current electric car measured by the New European Driving Cycle is about 200-250km.

This is great if you want to use it as a city or commute car if you can recharge it over night, but going from Hamburg to Vienna that would take about 9h in a regular car becomes a six days road trip that you have to carefully plan as with the non uniformed charging infrastructure you might not be able to rely on a quick-recharge station that will recharge your car withing 6h, but you have to use conventional power out of the socket which takes up to 14h to fully recharge.
And driving abroad has some new surprises, your french built electric car sold in Germany is not compatible with the quick recharging stations in France.

The best proposal I head was making the batteries easily replacable, so when you drive to a charging station your batteries are replaced with fully charged and there is no need to wait for hours. Having an uniformed infrastructure like that would cause much more acceptance. But we are still in the early development phases, so with the technological advancements standardization is still far away.

While no doubt electric cars are going to be the future, there is still much to be desired before they will reach mainstream status. Imho 2019 is too early to completely abandon pure combustion engines, hybrid engines will make Volvos even more expensive.

[Tommi]

And what about those of us who literally cannot charge an electric car outside their homes? I rent a flat that is on second floor (as in G, 1st F, 2nd F). I have no way to charge an electric car. It's all nice saying electric cars are the future, but they clearly aren't for a lot of the people in the UK at least that don't have private driveways. And that's a lot of car owners.

As others have said, the charging time to distance traveled ratio is extremely bad. In all my time traveling up and down UK motorways, I have seen THREE charging areas. That's from Edinburgh down A1 to Birmingham, and from Glasgow M74 down to Birmingham. THREE. And they were always full. I've been to pretty much every service station stop down and up as well. As a motorist, why on earth would I want to wait 2 to 4 hours waiting on battery vs 2 mins at petrol station? The £50 to fill my tank is worth it for the time I would have to spend waiting on finding a spot AND waiting for it to charge. Lets not forget batteries finite lifespan, or rental costs per month for one. Until battery tech improves to the point of 500 miles per charge and 5 mins to charge it AND massive rollout of charging points at every parking spot in major cities and shopping centres, I will never ever buy one.

Well, I say buy one,I get free cars via Motability anyways. So unless they would put a free charging point outside my flat with the space dedicated to me, I'll never get one.

[Elim Garak]

You've never seen a horse barn if you think horses are clean!

And yet they are the cleanest engines ever made!

[Puri]

And yet they are the cleanest engines ever made!

Depends on which norm you look. The CO2 emission per distance travelled by horse is over 50 times worse than that of a modern combustion engine.

[Stormdash]

Electric cars -- changing which form of fossil fuels your vehicle runs on... but what really powers you is your sense of moral superiority.

[haxartus]

This graph only shows the range with a constant speed. In reality you have to break and accelerate all the time, severly reducing the range.

Not really as breaking recharges the batteries.

What people don't consider with Tesla is fuel efficiency. A regular 1 liter of gasoline costs here 1 euro, and a regular car consumes let's say 10 liters per 100km. Sou yo get 10 euro per 100km or 25 000 euro per 250 000 km. So, by the time you pass 250k kilometers, the fuel cost will pass the cost of the car.

Now, electric cars... Tesla Model S has a 60 kWh battery. Let's consider a 300 miles per recharge as more "realistic" (500km). Typical cost for 1kWh is 0.2 euro, so, 60kWh is 12 euro. 12 euro per 500km is something like 2.5 euro per 100km. So, 6000 euro per 250 000 km, compared to the 25 000 of the gasoline car. Even if you factor a 10k battery replacement every 500 000 - 1 000 000 km it's still way, way cheaper than internal combustion engine cars.

[Puri]

Not really as breaking recharges the batteries.

The efficiency factor of regenerative breaks is about 20%. It's a nice gimmick, but does not in the slightest compete with the additional power needed to accelerate the car.

[Zmaniac17]

Lol, these some countries are not using that much of electricity then, now add to their current electricity requirements the need to recharge ALL THE CARS EVERY DAY. Now let's talk all the OTHER countries. Not to mention the production of electric cars is dirtier.
And what do you think oil companies are going to do? They will fill the newly created energy market - they will burn the oil to produce electricity.

I said powerful, not fastest to 100. How much extra weight can it carry? How fast can it go and for how long? Nobody cares how fast it accelerates to 100...

You're grabbing at straws here dude. If you think electric engines aren't powerful you need to take a look at locomotives. The most powerful ones are electric. 17,838 horsepower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novoch...comotive_Plant

In addition to this power, electric technology potential has yet to be reached. Whereas internal combustion has reached its peak technologically. They also have many advantages such as simplicity and efficiency that makes internal combustion look like a horse and buggy. Electric engines are hands down more efficient than internal combustion. Internal combustion can be anywhere from 20 to 45% thermal efficiency, while electric can hit up to 90%. Arguing that electric cars are "dirtier" than internal combustion is ridiculous.


If you think the grid can't handle electric cars you're mistaken. Hooking up millions of electric cars gives the grid massive storage potential to draw from. They all have huge batteries in them. Go into a city or town and count the number of cars just sitting around doing nothing. This is technology that people will want. They just don't know it yet. The only reason you don't see more electric cars right now is battery tech. And that tech is coming like a train without breaks.

BTW. It seems like nobody noticed they said hybrid as well as electric. It's a transition technology. Volvo is not stupid. And the tech is already proven. I don't understand the controversy.

[Elim Garak]

Depends on which norm you look. The CO2 emission per distance travelled by horse is over 50 times worse than that of a modern combustion engine.

What CO2 emission by a horse? You mean breathing? They are breathing right now. If you start using them as engines - nothing will change in any significant way. Not to mention that every new horse is a carbon sink. They are made out of carbon you know.

A car? Do you really think replacing the planets 1 billon cars with horse drawn transport would be "cleaner"?

Yes it will, not to mention we don't need to replace every car, lone riders will not be a thing.

[Stormdash]

What CO2 emission by a horse? You mean breathing? They are breathing right now. If you start using them as engines - nothing will change in any significant way. Not to mention that every new horse is a carbon sink. They are made out of carbon you know.

Yes it will, not to mention we don't need to replace every car, lone riders will not be a thing.

Well, they fart methane, too, just like cows, which is infamously on the list of things green-is-the-new-red activists want to tax.

[Zmaniac17]

What CO2 emission by a horse? You mean breathing? They are breathing right now. If you start using them as engines - nothing will change in any significant way. Not to mention that every new horse is a carbon sink. They are made out of carbon you know.

Yes it will, not to mention we don't need to replace every car, lone riders will not be a thing.

If you put a thousand horses in the street, it gets covered in horse manure. So if you want that be my guest. This is a silly argument that isn't even really on topic. You must be trolling.

[Aggrophobic]

Cool. Will be intresting to see what happens.

[Puri]

What CO2 emission by a horse? You mean breathing? They are breathing right now. If you start using them as engines - nothing will change in any significant way. Not to mention that every new horse is a carbon sink. They are made out of carbon you know.

They create huge amounts of methane in their digestive system, and the manure they create also emits co2 while decomposing. They are even emiting while they are "not used". Just idling a 600kg horse has a energy consumption of about 28kW/h that has to be covered by about 5kg hay or 1-2kg hay and 1-2kg special food.
If you would replace all cars with horses in a city you would get a serious CO2 problem that would make Bejing look like some climatic spa.

[zoefschildpad]

People forget that Tesla is weighting more than 2 tons, which is a big NO for a city car.

Why would weight matter? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't understand what the problem would be.

I also see a lot of people worry about infrastructure. Obviously many charging stations will have to be built everywhere, and they will be. Rapid charging takes around 20 minutes, and if you've driven your batteries dry, you need the break anyway. Electric cars will be a bit of a niche market for a while, especially in the US where distances are much bigger, but the infrastructure will catch up, you'll be able to charge anywhere, and rapid charging stations will be as common as gas stations are now. It's just a matter of time.

[Piglord]

Electric cars are superior in every way imaginable. There is not even a comparison.

Except for hauling or towing.