Let the mourning commence
This, then, is it – the last decade of petrol power. Synonymous with the motor car for more than a century, the engine’s days are numbered. We salute it – and take stock
Clearly, the government’s announcement will not bring about the engine’s immediate demise
This magazine has hymned the internal-combustion engine for nearly 60 years now, so it feels weird and sad and disconcerting to be sitting here on a bleak, cold winter’s morning in 2021, writing its obituary. Or more precisely, an advance obituary for your ability to buy a new car powered by an internal-combustion engine in the United Kingdom, following the government’s announcement late last year that their sales will be banned from 2030, and sales of hybrids from 2035.
Clearly, an announcement from a British government which is too often happy to hold a press conference now and sort the details later will not bring about the immediate demise of a device which has been with us for 200 years, is made by the hundreds of million each year, powers far more than just cars, and on which the world’s economies and societies still depend. Nine years is a long time in politics. We’ll have at least two general elections before the first ban is enacted, and although a Labour government is very unlikely to overturn it there’s a chance that the ban might be diluted or delayed by lobbying.
But if the car makers are protesting, they’re doing it privately or quietly. Carlos Tavares, boss of the recently formed Stellantis group, has complained about ‘narrow-minded’ new rules which favour electric vehicles over other solutions, but otherwise seems to accept the inevitable.
‘If governments are saying you must go electric, I will go electric, and I will do the best electric vehicles in the world,’ he said recently.
Volvo will be all-EV by 2030. In January, General Motors became the first of the major global car makers to commit to replacing combustion engines – including hybrids – in its passenger cars, its self-imposed 2035 ⊲
Even the British marques until now heavily dependent on engines are bullish. Bentley will be electric by 2030, and McLaren will launch only hybrids from now on
deadline unrelated to the British ban as it no longer sells cars in Europe.
Even the British marques until now most heavily dependent on conventional engines for their performance and image have been bullish about their ability to meet and even beat the deadline. Jaguar aims to be fully electric by 2025 and Bentley by 2030; CEO Adrian Hallmark says it won’t need the extra five years of hybrids. McLaren will launch only hybrids from now on, it says, and cease engine development from 2030 and sales from 2035. It won’t be asking for exemptions for low-volume models, and nor is any future government likely to grant one for cars bought by the rich.
So, the ban is probably going to happen. And given car makers’ increasing readiness for it, what looks like a cliff edge now might feel like a speed bump when we get there, or even pass under our wheels unnoticed. The government might simply have put a definite end date on the combustion engine’s pre-existing, gradual but terminal decline in some developed markets. If nine years is a long time in politics, it’s an aeon in the current rapid transformation of transportation. I won’t repeat again here the rate at which EV sales are increasing, new models being launched, battery energy density increasing and charge times falling, but they all indicate a clear direction of travel which the government has recognised and perhaps simply positioned itself ahead of.
And this is only a ban on UK domestic retail sales, of course: a tiny part of the global picture. Far more significant than this ban is the fact that China has never really got on with the internal-combustion engine: building, buying and using them enthusiastically, but seldom engineering its own and largely manufacturing licensed versions of Japanese designs. There is huge political will there to leave the ICE age behind and move to an electric future in which its domestic battery makers and pure-play EV car makers own much of the key intellectual property and manufacturing, and the legacy Western car makers are forced to come to them for their tech. What China’s leaders decide to encourage carries far more clout than what Boris decides to ban. The explosive growth in the share price of Tesla and Nio – and the implied value of as-yet unlisted EV makers like Rivian – might alternately befuddle and enrage the establishment, but it’s another clear sign of how the world thinks this is all going to go. And more practically, it lets these firms access cheaply the funds they need to make it happen.
Given the great global forces at work, does the UK’s 2030 ban – or Norway’s in 2025, or California’s in 2035, or France’s in 2040, or those being considered by Germany and others – actually matter?
‘I think they do, because there’s just no way around them any more,’ ⊲
The marques we love should all survive this, and if they don’t it’s their own fault
As a means of propelling a car, the engine is far from dead. We’ll have a long wait before every American state bans them, or Russia
Arndt Ellinghorst tells CAR. The hawk-eyed German analyses the car industry for US investment house Sanford Bernstein. He speaks directly to car maker CEOs, most of whom have not yet committed to ending sales of conventional combustion engines.
‘Whereas in the past, when there were just emission targets, then yeah, there was [the potential for workarounds]. But if you just can’t sell these things any more, then that’s it. The industry needs clarity, it needs certainty. I think it’s almost a win for them. There’s almost a sense of relief.
‘More and more companies now tell me that they’re not spending any more money on engines, not investing anything, because the incremental improvements to performance or emissions just aren’t worth it. There’s really very little we can do to engines now to make them significantly more powerful or more efficient. The engine has been engineered to its end.’
Some of that relief will come from the prospect of no longer having to wrestle emissions down to the ever-more improbable targets set by the European Union, or pay its fines, once sufficient member states announce bans to make selling engine-powered cars in the remainder uneconomic. But attitudes to the internal-combustion engine are very different elsewhere in the world. As a means of propelling a car, the internal-combustion engine is far from dead. We’ll have a long wait before every American state bans them, or Russia. And in parts of the developing world, a petrol or diesel engine isn’t seen as an environmental crime but as an important means of self-advancement. British workers will probably still be churning out conventional engines at Hams Hall, Wolverhampton and Dagenham after the ban: they just won’t be able to buy them.
‘Some countries will just say no to engines,’ says Ellinghorst. ‘We’ve had that already in small areas, but now we’ll see it across bigger regions. And then China is going to electrify. So we’ll get increasingly extreme regional differences, with very different powertrains for Europe versus the US, for example. But we’ve always had that, to an extent. The US didn’t like diesel, ⊲
and Europe did. And we’ll still need engines for hybrids, but they become just another component, like a gearbox. Car makers can out-source engines completely, get that exposure off their balance sheet. Who cares where the engine comes from if it’s just charging a battery? I mean, leaving aside enthusiasts, right? Even for something like a BMW, I don’t think consumers care about the engine any more. Design, ease of use and the price; that’s what determines purchase decisions.’ (In one of his last interviews as head of Mercedes, Dieter Zetsche told CAR exactly that.)
It’s reassuring that our governments might still have a little influence over the coming wave of disruptive change led largely by cashed-up, unaccountable tech titans. The risk is that our politicians blunder into a situation they don’t really understand, and make things worse for us, the consumers. Bans enacted in one market but not others risk leaving car buyers there disadvantaged if they’re not supported by investments in charging infrastructure and tax breaks to get the costs of EVs down. And by picking winners and banning losers, governments risk distorting tech’s propensity to find the best solution, leaving their national industries exposed.
‘My advice to government was that it’s okay to have a punchy requirement, but the onus then moves to them to bring the rest of the world with us,’ Dr Andy Palmer tells CAR. Formerly the CEO of Aston Martin, and chief planner and vice-president at Nissan, he led the development of the Leaf, the world’s best-selling electric car, and has advised the UK government and prime ministers directly on the car industry. ‘Can the UK regulate this? Yes, it can. But to be out of kilter with the rest of the world would mean that we would have less choice of cars, and more expensive cars. This is not sensible if it’s done in isolation.
‘My second point – and I’ve said this to other governments that have consulted with me, and there’ve been a few – is to ask what it is they’re trying to solve,’ he says. ‘I’m a great advocate of EVs but they are not the only answer to reducing CO2, if that’s your real goal. If you legislate for EVs then you risk making the same mistake that we made with diesel.
‘Don’t close the door to the alternatives, because while I think EVs will become the mainstream globally, there are other countries and other manufacturers working on fuel cells, in-cylinder combustion of hydrogen, and synthetic fuels. ⊲
By picking winners and banning losers, governments risk distorting tech’s propensity to find the best solution
Nobody in government wants to talk about synthetic fuels now, but we know that Porsche and Ferrari are working on it. If they make it work and we can continue to use internal-combustion engines, there’s no way Britain could be unique in banning them. In the 14 years before hybrids are banned, technologies we don’t yet know about will come along, and might overtake those we do.’
The marques we love should all survive this, Ellinghorst notes: nine years is enough time to get ready, he says, and if they don’t it’s their own fault.
What’s less certain is how much mass-market car making remains in the UK as the car itself is remade. Ellinghorst says that in his discussions with UK government advisors he hears talk of bringing battery manufacturing here, but little activity. Encouraging the production of EVs here might be a better use of the government’s time and effort than a ban on what they’ll replace.
Like the old stone horse-watering troughs you sometimes still see by the side of the road, we’ll get used to cruising cleanly and silently past disused or redeveloped petrol stations made redundant by the shift to something better. It would be criminal if our car factories went the same way too.
You might be wondering where us car enthusiasts fit into all of this, but the sad fact is that we don’t. The forces behind the coming disruption are so vast and ineluctable that the idea that any of this will be influenced by the fact that some people like the sound of engines or how they feel to use is just a bit silly.
The typically open-minded CAR reader is going to want an EV as his or her daily driver anyway, if you don’t already have one. Our weekend cars are unlikely to be forced off the road when the details of the coming ban are finally decided, because although the compulsory scrapping of the oldest and most-polluting cars is the simplest way of cutting emissions, it also hits hardest those least able to afford a new, clean replacement. So it would only happen voluntarily through a well-funded scrappage scheme.
The best we can hope for is a system like Norway’s, where EV adoption is so widespread that nobody’s bothered about the minimal carbon impact of your classic, and you pay a nominal annual road tax to drive it as much as you like.
Perhaps the prospect of a future like that isn’t so weird, sad or disconcerting after all. We’ll have clean, fast and silent EVs for weekdays, £4k Boxsters still for the weekends (though they’re likely to skyrocket in value), and CAR will still be published. Some hope, then, for those of us with a perverse, Luddite attachment to engines that breathe and burn stuff, and gearboxes we operate ourselves.
The idea that any of this will be influenced by the fact that some people like the sound and feel of engines is just a bit silly