Photo: Ferrari
Every revolution has a winning side and a losing side. The problem is that nobody truly knows which will be which in the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) versus Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) war currently being waged across the planet.
As our world undergoes the profound transition from fossil fuels to electricity, the casualties of this revolution will extend beyond the obvious contenders like some overly traditional carmakers and the very oil companies that once fueled our vehicles.
Let us take a moment to think about the often-overlooked victims of this transformative wave – the lesser-known entities. The underdogs who will bear the brunt of this revolution quietly and unnoticed when it comes to the point of view of profit and sales.
No one has a long-term ICE strategy anymore; they want to develop, build, and sell as much cool stuff as possible before completely forgetting the internal combustion engine.
To put things into perspective, European carmakers last developed an internal combustion engine from scratch over a decade ago, and I'm obviously not including ultra-limited hypercars like the Mercedes-AMG One, the upcoming Aston Martin Valkyrie, or Gordon Murray's lineup of bespoke V12 supercars with manuals and three pedals.
Name any Euro car company, even those that recently unveiled a brand-new vehicle. I'll name the year when its dino-juice-sipping ICE was initially conceived. And no, that year won't even coincide with the decade the car was introduced in.
But wait, I might need to be corrected about some things. Hey! What about the Ferrari Tipo F163 engine? That twin-turbocharged, 3.0-liter V6 powering the 296 GTB is not only brand new and launched in the same year as the car it powers, but it's also the most power-dense ever put into a production car.
A staggering 654 HP (663 PS) at 8,000 rpm from just 2,992 cc made this 'piccolo V12' have a better output per liter than the previous record holders, part of the Mercedes-AMG "45" lineup. Sure, the dreaded four-cylinder in the latest C 63 has it beat, with 469 HP (476 PS) from 2.0 liters of displacement, but that powertrain is an evolution of an older design.
What else do we have? Well, since we're speaking of horsepower per liter and brand-new ICE designs, there is also the Koenigsegg TFG three-cylinder, whose cute name stands for Tiny Friendly Giant. While not as mass-produced as the engines above, it punched way above its weight - pun intended - with no less than 603 HP (612 PS) from a displacement of 2.0 liters.
Okay, okay, what about regular, more mainstream ICE powerplants? Those are surely just evolutions of their predecessors across the board, aren't they? Well, they are, and they aren't, and don't call me Shirley!
The forthcoming Euro 7 standards in Europe and Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations in the U.S. won't spell the demise of combustion engines, despite the ominous predictions.
With that in mind, fewer and fewer carmakers are investing in clean-sheet designs for their new or upcoming ICE powertrains.
Among those few, we find Mercedes-Benz, which has a dedicated skunkworks team for developing a hybrid-only lineup of small-displacement four-cylinders to populate the non-electric part of its upcoming compact lineup. Spearheaded by the electric CLA, that lineup will trim some of the fat brought by models like the A-Class and B-Class, but will be available in both pure EV and ICE-powered versions.
Okay, who else? BMW brags about developing a new generation of mildly electrified combustion engines for its M lineup. However, we all know they will have the same bore and stroke as their predecessors, so there is no clean-sheet design.
The Volkswagen Group has been reusing the same block design for its primarily modular powertrains for decades, and the British have even resorted to borrowing engines with newer tech from the Germans.
That leaves us with the French, in Europe, who haven't introduced a brand-new, clean-sheet design for a combustion engine in at least a decade. Heck, Peugeot-Citroen, now part of Stellantis, is still using a version of the 1.6-liter four-cylinder developed back in 2006 with BMW.
Returning to the story, the unsung heroes of the internal combustion engine are those who continued working on this now prehistoric mode of propulsion despite the lack of profit and fame it would bring.
Over a hundred years ago, the dawn of the self-propelled automobile brought the end of horse-drawn carriages and changed the fate of the people who made their living building them. We still have horses, and some still travel in horse-drawn carts for one reason or another. Still, nobody remembers the name of the engineer who made that fancy leaf-spring suspension on a carriage in 1850-something.
It may not happen overnight, and it may not happen as soon as some expect. Still, the ICEpocalypse is right around the corner, and the EV revolution will have its fair share of casualties.
Some of those victims are the engineers who keep making extraordinary things in times of adversity for their livelihood. In contrast, others are the die-hard, old-school aficionados who huffed and puffed at every single major update to their old ways of driving. I still know people who wouldn't be caught dead driving an automatic car or one that can park itself.
That said, the way things are progressing, the next 5 to 10 years will be crucial in finding out what future we're heading into.
The prevailing opinion suggests that electric power suits city cars and even family cars and SUVs, as long as you're not the one for long road trips. Taxis and delivery vans? Absolutely, electrify them. But sports cars? Electric? Unthinkable. Electricity seems too pristine, orderly, and far too safe for the pulsating, adrenaline-inducing sports cars universe.
Undeniably, no EV has captured the essence of unbridled, almost wild intensity you experience with the most hardcore ICE-powered sports cars. Yes, the world-beating Rimac Nevera is something else, but it can't generate the same response down your spine as the roar of a Bugatti 16-cylinder or the wail of a Ferrari V12, does it?
Nobody knows which carmaker will build the last ICE ever, but I'm willing to bet it will have a horse emblem on the hood. It remains to be seen whether that will be a Mustang, a Ferrari, or a Porsche. We will always have horses, won't we?
Let us take a moment to think about the often-overlooked victims of this transformative wave – the lesser-known entities. The underdogs who will bear the brunt of this revolution quietly and unnoticed when it comes to the point of view of profit and sales.
No one has a long-term ICE strategy anymore; they want to develop, build, and sell as much cool stuff as possible before completely forgetting the internal combustion engine.
To put things into perspective, European carmakers last developed an internal combustion engine from scratch over a decade ago, and I'm obviously not including ultra-limited hypercars like the Mercedes-AMG One, the upcoming Aston Martin Valkyrie, or Gordon Murray's lineup of bespoke V12 supercars with manuals and three pedals.
Name any Euro car company, even those that recently unveiled a brand-new vehicle. I'll name the year when its dino-juice-sipping ICE was initially conceived. And no, that year won't even coincide with the decade the car was introduced in.
But wait, I might need to be corrected about some things. Hey! What about the Ferrari Tipo F163 engine? That twin-turbocharged, 3.0-liter V6 powering the 296 GTB is not only brand new and launched in the same year as the car it powers, but it's also the most power-dense ever put into a production car.
A staggering 654 HP (663 PS) at 8,000 rpm from just 2,992 cc made this 'piccolo V12' have a better output per liter than the previous record holders, part of the Mercedes-AMG "45" lineup. Sure, the dreaded four-cylinder in the latest C 63 has it beat, with 469 HP (476 PS) from 2.0 liters of displacement, but that powertrain is an evolution of an older design.
What else do we have? Well, since we're speaking of horsepower per liter and brand-new ICE designs, there is also the Koenigsegg TFG three-cylinder, whose cute name stands for Tiny Friendly Giant. While not as mass-produced as the engines above, it punched way above its weight - pun intended - with no less than 603 HP (612 PS) from a displacement of 2.0 liters.
Okay, okay, what about regular, more mainstream ICE powerplants? Those are surely just evolutions of their predecessors across the board, aren't they? Well, they are, and they aren't, and don't call me Shirley!
The forthcoming Euro 7 standards in Europe and Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations in the U.S. won't spell the demise of combustion engines, despite the ominous predictions.
With that in mind, fewer and fewer carmakers are investing in clean-sheet designs for their new or upcoming ICE powertrains.
Among those few, we find Mercedes-Benz, which has a dedicated skunkworks team for developing a hybrid-only lineup of small-displacement four-cylinders to populate the non-electric part of its upcoming compact lineup. Spearheaded by the electric CLA, that lineup will trim some of the fat brought by models like the A-Class and B-Class, but will be available in both pure EV and ICE-powered versions.
Okay, who else? BMW brags about developing a new generation of mildly electrified combustion engines for its M lineup. However, we all know they will have the same bore and stroke as their predecessors, so there is no clean-sheet design.
The Volkswagen Group has been reusing the same block design for its primarily modular powertrains for decades, and the British have even resorted to borrowing engines with newer tech from the Germans.
That leaves us with the French, in Europe, who haven't introduced a brand-new, clean-sheet design for a combustion engine in at least a decade. Heck, Peugeot-Citroen, now part of Stellantis, is still using a version of the 1.6-liter four-cylinder developed back in 2006 with BMW.
Returning to the story, the unsung heroes of the internal combustion engine are those who continued working on this now prehistoric mode of propulsion despite the lack of profit and fame it would bring.
Over a hundred years ago, the dawn of the self-propelled automobile brought the end of horse-drawn carriages and changed the fate of the people who made their living building them. We still have horses, and some still travel in horse-drawn carts for one reason or another. Still, nobody remembers the name of the engineer who made that fancy leaf-spring suspension on a carriage in 1850-something.
It may not happen overnight, and it may not happen as soon as some expect. Still, the ICEpocalypse is right around the corner, and the EV revolution will have its fair share of casualties.
Some of those victims are the engineers who keep making extraordinary things in times of adversity for their livelihood. In contrast, others are the die-hard, old-school aficionados who huffed and puffed at every single major update to their old ways of driving. I still know people who wouldn't be caught dead driving an automatic car or one that can park itself.
That said, the way things are progressing, the next 5 to 10 years will be crucial in finding out what future we're heading into.
The prevailing opinion suggests that electric power suits city cars and even family cars and SUVs, as long as you're not the one for long road trips. Taxis and delivery vans? Absolutely, electrify them. But sports cars? Electric? Unthinkable. Electricity seems too pristine, orderly, and far too safe for the pulsating, adrenaline-inducing sports cars universe.
Undeniably, no EV has captured the essence of unbridled, almost wild intensity you experience with the most hardcore ICE-powered sports cars. Yes, the world-beating Rimac Nevera is something else, but it can't generate the same response down your spine as the roar of a Bugatti 16-cylinder or the wail of a Ferrari V12, does it?
Nobody knows which carmaker will build the last ICE ever, but I'm willing to bet it will have a horse emblem on the hood. It remains to be seen whether that will be a Mustang, a Ferrari, or a Porsche. We will always have horses, won't we?
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