Featured The coming electric vehicle transformation

Sales drop could be sign of peril for American muscle cars
That is doubtful. The demographics skew quite old, and in 20 years most of the muscle car market will be gone. That is different than the sports car market.

A 6 cyclinder can have quite a good engine note (that's what the best sounding porsches and bmws have). When you can get 300+ hp out of a phev with a turbo 3 that can outperform those classic muscle cars and actually handle well, but a 3L straight 6 phev is going to sound better ;-) I don't expect many that are under 50 now will be buying a traditional v8 muscle car in 10 years. I also don't think the ice is dead.

The place where the ice is going to stick around a lot longer is in inexpensive cars like the versa, fit, etc.

 

First of all, I have no problem with Prius-gaso-hybrids...so often when "they" are saying cars are going electric rapidly, they are lumping in hybrids.

As far as BEV per se, I see some demand but for a *natural* free market USA BEV take-over of auto market, that is long term. However I expect in USA that Congress may take a similar approach to ethanol, and mandate it to 10% level. That will take some strong cash back for BEVs, free HOV, mandates, and penalties on gaso cars...not free market.

 

Ask yourself this: Do you honestly believe that NASCAR will ever switch to EV's? Or If not, then will the EV eventually be the demise of NASCAR?

Now, how many muscle car owners today happen to be NASCAR fans?

Again, if gasoline prices continue to drop because the rest of us are buying EV's, where is the incentive for your average NASCAR fan to buy anything OTHER than a muscle car... ...Remember, they do it for pleasure, not for practicality.

 

I am old enough to have lived through film-to-digital transition in photography. I was an avid amateur film photographer back in the 80', 90's and 00'. But I was also an early adopter of the digital camera. I hated its image quality at first and kept on shooting film until the middle of second decade of this century. I still have a small collection (minimal) of 35mm film equipment, including B&W film developing capabilities and high quality film scanning into digital. Do I use any of it? No, I do not. I haven't in years! Why? Well, because after 25 years or so of consumer digital photography, digital is at the point of being better than film. At the beginning of digital photography the advantages were limited to having an instant result and being able to share said result on new fangled media like electronic mail and bulletin boards. The image quality was not that good compared to film. There was so much effort on part of digital to compete, but mostly it was in the space of convenience and speed, not image quality. In the last decade or so the image quality of digital has surpassed film by a wide margin (if you consider post-processing of images). The light sensitivity of digital media has surpassed film by a wide margin (you can shoot at ISO 1600 with impunity these days and ISO 800 film was and still is horribly grainy). I remember the discussions of the day. Film is NEVER going away NEVER! Some said. Including myself. And we were correct, maybe. But I have recently, for the fun of it, tried to shoot a roll of color film and have it developed. It was neither easy nor cheap. Film is dead and after my generation is gone, the film will be gone. I am sure of it. It will not even be available in boutique settings. It's dead because the digital imaging technology has surpassed it in all ways possible. It is cheaper, better quality, more easily shareable, loss-lessly copyable and more portable (I can take pretty darned good photos with my telephone).

Why am I posting this here? Am I even in the right forum? Sorry, lades and gentlemen, I must get back to my nap.

 

The price of gasoline won't drop with a renewable mandate.

 

i get it!
when ev's are cheaper, higher quality, more fun, more reliable, more efficient and more versatile, we'll have made the transition.

still sounds like the year 3000.

 

More fun, efficient, and reliable - that likely is here for some and will be for most soon.

Less expensive - depends on definition and what class of car. For 250+ hp luxury and super cars that's true today. For things like the fit or versa, I say 25 years ;-)

Sounds better, matter of opinion, true for many today, but some love the engine note of a 6 or 8 cylinder engine. Porsche has an optional fake engine sound track.

More convient on long trips, that's going to take awhile for bevs, its probably just as convient on phevs but the proper form factor is still missing.

Higher quality? My tesla is higher quality than my prius was and in some ways higher than my previous lexus, but its a new company and those other things (interior trim and touch, paint, etc) they need to steal some Lexus, Mercedes, Audi, and BMW engineers. Those other companies will make them higher quality than their current ice offerings when they get serious.

 

Yea... Your attitude is common... It took 10 years to force automakers to install seatbelts on all vehicles because of that kind of manly muscle car stupidity mindset.

And I'm not even gonna begin to explain how many jerks thought smog alerts and not letting us children go outside of their classroom to play on bad days in the late 70's was considered more acceptable than requiring a catalytic converter and banning leaded gas, but it happened anyways.

As always, the same argument prevails, in this case requiring all cars, even muscle cars, to have an electric motor inside the transmission and a battery pack to manage the greater efficiency is GOING TO BECOME LAW because it's the easiest way to reach mandatory fuel efficiency requirements up above 45mpg and despite the bumbling incompetence of our fake president who thinks he can sue California to rescind that requirement, California and auto-makers will have no problem bypassing his clueless powerless kind of stupid and make it happen anyways.

 

When finding and buying gasoline is a multi-hour ordeal, the transition will go very quickly.

 

I see you refrained from answering my question "Do you honestly believe that NASCAR will ever switch to EV's?" and instead resort to invective and personal attack against those who would otherwise respectfully disagree.

 

Seeing how NASCAR still uses carburetors, and up to a few years ago, leaded gas, what they race has no relevance to what is on public roads.

 

Agreed... ...But then, subtlety gets you nowhere.

 

Wondering about what NASCAR will do is like wondering what kind of fashion clowns will adopt in rodeos. Who cares?!

 

So, it's gone from invective to "who cares?" (and you STILL haven't answered the question!!!)

I take it from this you have no rational retort.

And the answer to "who cares" is: A whole lot of muscle car owner who also like NASCAR for the very same reason. Right now, looking out at the parking lot, they outnumber hybrids and EV here by about 10 to 1.

 

And looking out my window Prius outnumbers muscle cars 5 to 0. What's your point? Muscle cars are the film cameras of the past. They will cling on for dear life and when their fans die, they will die as well. That may be 30 years in the future, but we are talking about the future here, correct? Again, who cares what muscle car owners think? Seriously, it's statistically irrelevant, especially as that segment of population undergoes attrition.

 

^ That.

For faster results, promote kits and interchangeable parts to give rise to a DIY builder’s culture.

For slower results and herculean circumvention efforts, legislate it from Washington.

 

Dude, NASCAR is stock car racing!!!

If you force all ICE cars by law to be built with hybrid systems, you force NASCAR to use those stock cars to race with, Duh!

Besides formula one racing has been using hybrid technology with their engines since 2014 because it's faster and improves overall car performance...

Do you have any other failed arguments for why the death of non-hybrid ICEs won't happen?

 

1) A sample of five IS statistically insignificant from a scientifically professional standpoint. 2) The digital camera analogy is a very poor one - it did not kill a major sports genre and American past-time. 3) Discounting a significantly large percentage of a population is not very a effective way of converting them. Conservationist learned this the hard way back in the 70's. Environmentalist?.. ...not so much. And as long as they continue make the mistake of projecting their own views on to others, they will continue to fall short of their goals.

 

Good one... There's lots of good analogies for this... But I got stuff to do and yours is more than good enough for now!

It won't be long before kids are wondering how we were ever so dumb as to not have an electric motor inside our car's transmission.