That fuel is totally depraved, and has no hope of salvation.

Ah you're right, thank you!

Pretty sure it's just a way to get more expansion from the same air charge.

It's a similar idea to the Atkinson cycle. You have dissimilar compression and expansion strokes. In normal engines, there's a limit to compression ratio because if it's too high, it causes knocking. But a bigger expansion ratio lets you extract more energy out of the combusted gas, which leads to higher efficiency.

The original Atkinson cycle idea was to use some complex linkage to get dissimilar compression and expansion strokes, but the way it's implemented in things like the Prius is to have a high compression engine, but mess with the intake valve timing such that you only use a small part of that compression during the intake phase so you effectively handicap your compression ratio to avoid knock, while still retaining the full stroke during the expansion phase.

I am sure that I don't understand the specifics of what Porsche is doing, but the article says the cycle is intake-compression-power-compression-power-exhaust. For that to be the case they have to be burning the same fuel and air mixture twice, and I don't understand the chemistry there enough to even speculate how it works.

I think it's safe to assume that the second stroke is burning incomplete combustion products left over from the first stroke. I think that the second compression stroke would have to be higher compression than the first in order to get more complete combustion of what's left behind.

> creating power in the compression phase

Other than the potential energy of either the heat or the compressed gas, what "power" is created in the compression phase of a normal four stroke ICE?

"Never" is a really long time.

It would take a severe lack of vision to not be able to imagine that the following will -never- improve: charging infrastructure, charging technology (specifically, charging time), and BEV range

So North America is limited to its large places? New York isn’t in North America.

The last mile problem doesn’t negate the fact that for 85% of people an electric vehicle is possible in five years.

who/what can only charge from a 20A circuit?

This just in, houses in the world's greatest country don't have electricity. Really?

Lol.

>need to talk about the vanity attraction of a future all electric Porsche

Future? You can buy an all-electric Porsche Taycan since 2019 - and it’s faster than the 911.

Sports cars are fully adopting electrification, due to the huge torque numbers and high scalability. M-B and BMW of course, but also Porsche and soon to be Ferrari. It’s not just hybrids used for a boost (as in the decade past): those are full electrics.

Your understanding is very out of date.

All electric sports cars have been a thing for a while, even at the supercar level. Car enthusiasts have in fact embraced electrics. Go on youtube and look up drag race comparison races and a Model S Plaid is very frequently the one people want to beat.

Double clutched automatics have taken over h pattern manuals.

Check out the diagram at the top of this article: https://www.autozeitung.de/assets/styles/article_image/publi...

As you can see, compared to 2023, the sales numbers have been worse month for month in 2024, not just in August.

Not sure. Germans are traditionally both tech xenophobes and cheapskates - two arguments against EVs.

The main reason is price.

Thanks! I’m not sure what people expect from these engines- they’re somehow basically the most reliable car engine from that era (they regularly came out at the top of reliability ratings), while still making ~1.5x the power per displacement that was standard at the time. Things like the D chunk failure and IMS failure can happen, but most people will get a reliable 200-300k miles before they do, and the IMS can easily be prevented with a new bearing kit that is fairly cheap and easy to do. The 2.7 Boxster engine had none of the cylinder issues- that’s the Porsche to get if you want low hassle fun transportation IMO.

It’s true they’re expensive to rebuild properly but you can get used engines with a lot of life left for just a few k.

I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a correction, but if so I don't understand. The description of the two new strokes is as an addition to the normal four, one of which is the fuel intake, I was not assuming that decreases in quantity or anything. It could do, it's just orthogonal to the point - if you don't entirely combust whatever amount you inject in the first ignition , then the idea here aiui is to compress & ignite again to, yes, get some more 'power' out of it.

What’s the difference between getting more power out of a given quantity of fuel, versus using less fuel to achieve a given power output?

Good note...especially since I misspoke. Apparently..it doesn't use standard Miller cycle.

They are calling it Budack cycle. https://alexsautohaus.com/whats-changed-with-volkswagens-new...

Not even that: We have managed to extract some dense and flammable black oil hundreds of meters deep under the ocean soil, transport it thousands of km again to remote countries where it is processed and again transported and distributed daily to many storage locations where any layman can again transfer it to their own vehicles. That is a feat.

Electricity infrastructure already exists everywhere where we have civilization. And production is usually just hundreds or less km away. For lots of people it even happens at their own home.

The average amount of km every European drives is around 40km. For a standard EV that is around 7,2 kWh of energy per day, which can be charged in 2-3 hours from a normal 240V Schuko plug at home.

If there’s no option to charge at home, a weekly load on newer EVs with around 500km range would be more than enough, taking around 3-4 hours on standard 22kW chargers or less than 2 hours in a DC 50kW chargers.

EVs are a real option for lots of people. Main blocker for most of people according to most statistics is lack of knowledge on how to operate, and as a consequence fear of the unknown.

We have two massive parallel energy transfer systems in the world. And they are massive. Consider the electrical grid for all it's behemoth costs and regulations, at least it exists and is a known monster. Doubling it is a technical challenge but not an unknown. Akin to laying fiber. On one side of the grid you could even just change how the energy is produced at a few thousand plants and have zero change on consumer side if you wanted (for a given territory the size of a USA avg state)

Now imagine we came along and said we were going to add to the electrical grid a parallel system of transporting explosive liquid to billions of distributed combustion engines. Not only that, the explosive liquid is only available in a few politically charged areas in the world. Add all the tankers refineries pipes truck lines holding tanks pumps etc so that most people live at most a few miles from a holding tank that will distribute hundreds of gallons to them for their own micro power plant that only exists for their commute.

It seems crazy. We built both systems incrementally over time so we're in a massive sunk cost analysis whenever we think about replacing gas cars.

Naturally, the infrastructure arises when the demand is there. But nobody was ever hesitant to buy a 4G-only phone for fear of insufficient 4G service because every 4G phone also worked on 3G.

The same is not true of electric cars. People have real mileage anxiety because they can’t use petrol when a charger isn’t available

The big question is not whether the infrastructure will be built, but whether it will owned by rent-seekers who charge everyone without their own driveway a massive premium to charge their vehicles.

You need to acknowledge that in Europe, the high price of electricity mean consumers aren't getting any discounts in money/distance ($/mile being inappropriate in the EU), if not being charged more to charge an electric vehicle over an ICE vehicle.

Saving the environment is nobel, but affording it is another thing.

If price hikes in the US continue, there are places in the US where that may soon be the case, too. Then we're screwed. Thankfully hybrids aren't going anywhere. They may be more complicated, but they have the most critical feature, regenerative braking. instead of shedding the energy spent slowing down as pollution and heat, it gets saved and is used to move the vehicle later.

Transferring so much electricity to everywhere in an efficient way is more expensive and harder though, not counting electricity generation, only partially clean, noy enough, very expensive.

Yes we already have power cables but they do not generate power. The issue is clean power generation capacity.

I would really hate having to keep going out to move my car to a charger, then go out again to move it back to another parking spot when it's done (usually you pay a fine if you keep it at the charger). It's just so much work and it means I can't sit down and relax. And parking spaces in my area are extremely limited at night so every time I move I'd have to worry about finding one again (and a free charger too obviously which also seem to be extremely rare, I just know of one about 1km away)

For me a car is about convenience and having to worry about it and going out and doing things with it when I'm not even using it is the opposite of convenient. It should just be there and ready when I need it and forgotten when I don't. And it should be as cheap and low-maintenance as possible. If every parking space had a charger and I could just plug it in and forget about it when I park it, it'd be acceptable (in fact better than an ICE because at times I also had to remember to refuel it for an early trip). What adds to this also is that I don't really have a 'routine', my life is really ad-hoc.

So for me it would be a huge dealbreaker to have an EV until chargers are everywhere. But right now I have the perfect solution anyway which is not even having or needing a car at all :) My city has amazing public transport and 20 euros gets me an unlimited monthly travel pass. I don't even like spending money on cars, and when I did still own one it was usually a 1500-2000 euro old banger meaning that EVs are out of my price range anyway (even used ones will never be that cheap).

> I find plug in hybrids make no sense: electrification is the future.

Those of us living in the present prefer to be more flexible and have the best of both worlds (electric commute, ICE for long trips)

Really, just a bit of “planning around charging”? The less predictable your life is the less this is an option. The most extreme example of this is Hertz having to walk away from billions invested in 100,000 Teslas. Short term renters simply don’t tolerate the uncertainties that EVs bring.

> I find plug in hybrids make no sense: electrification is the future.

They make sense depending on how far away that future is, and I think that 'future' is way different for different parts of the world.

I assume you live in the US.

Because in almost every other country there is a real lack of decent charging infrastructure.

Especially outside of densely populated areas.

They're called sports cars for a reason. They're driven far less than everyday cars. They're fantastic fun.

I'm an enviromentalist and I'd still buy an ICE Porsche.

No EV has come close ... only the Hyundai ioniq 5 N seems to be looking interesting.

Fortunately the definition of wrong is very personal. We still have at least 40-50 years of ICE vehicles running on the Earth. Making them even more efficient and cheap is a valuable feat for many millions.

I like to compare this to SSD vs HDD. Why even invest in HDD development when SSDs are so much better?

Right now almost all consumers use SSDs because they are affordable for space most people need.

And I remember how we were transitioning where I bought 128gb drive for cost of 4TB HDD to have super snappy system and I had to manage system much more to not burn writes too quickly (ram drives for logs and temp etc)

That where I believe we are right now with EVs. But they are more affordable and have better range every year.

But to go further with this comparison we still develop new generations of HDDs even after all that time, even when everyone believe that at some point in the future we will abandon that technology completely

For now electric cars make sense for those who have a way to charge at their home. Otherwise not so great.

Oh, they will be, no worries - doubly so as the fuel they need goes from being a necessary evil of civilization to a niche product for enthusiasts.

There's going to be along tail of ICE vehicles out there, though - say, I have a tractor on my farm (which is not being worked commercially, it is basically an expensive and time-consuming hobby seeing as my wife's family has tilled this plot of land since the dark ages. Literally.)

Anyway, even if diesel prices soar to $25/l (That's $100/gal for the metrically challenged), with our current usage, it will still be cheaper to buy diesel at that cost than to invest in a new, EV tractor. Hence I can't see that tractor going anywhere anytime soon.

Why should something be heavily vilified and taxed simply because you personally dislike it?

There are plenty of place around the world where there isn't sufficient capacity in the grid even for powering the houses.. let alone EVs

It’s amazing how much the luxury car industry has advertised what is essentially a shaking and noise complement to going fast.

The “smooth” revs. The “visceral” feel. The “connection” to the road. It’s just a few metal cylinders going up and down real fast, tuned to sound nice in a packaged product.

It’s like brainwashing. Impressive really. I like going to the track when I can, but that’s a bit different. The statement is the work you’ve put into your car, not how “exclusive” your statement is.

people who drive expensive cars don't care about twitter opinions.

They’re already heavily taxed. But why vilified?

Your proposals are a bit contradictory. If you heavily tax something, it becomes a money source for the government; does it then make sense to try to extinguish said activity through artificial social aversion? Also, whatever is vilified by the government, but stays legal or at least feasible, will act as a magnet for the counterculture.

If you really hate something, just propose an outright ban. It would work for Porsches; no one can secretly grow a Porsche in his backyard.

you must be european

I was at a local track in my older bmw (non M), a Tesla 3 (on lowered springs) was next to me in the grid. It did not compete with the corvettes or Porsches but with the Miatas and Me, it just weighed too much in the turns to carry the speed.

Instant torque is cool, but goddamn it is soulless.

Which ICE performance car? I went from an SRT8 back in 2012 to a Tesla Model 3 performance + mods and now most recently went back to ICE via an AMG GT63. I can confidently say that the GT63 is leagues more fun than the Tesla ever was. Sure the Tesla was quick off the line, but outside of that it felt sterile and the ride was quite uninspired.

-True, but I believe (at least this holds true for me) - the tinkerability, if you like, of ICEs is much higher. You can work on them at home, install all sorts of modifications and upgrades - real or perceived - to a much larger extent than you (currently) can on your EV.

It all depends on what makes cars interesting to you, of course - but a lot of the car enthusiast clientele would merrily start tinkering with their pride and joy even if all is well, just because they can.

Thats a very common misconception. Being very fast doesnt necessarily make a car very fun.

The fastest EV is nothing compared to the fastest ICE.

Top fuel dragsters accelerate from 0 to 100 mph in 0.8 seconds.

I have tried fast EV and it's boring. I prefer my loud meth injected turbo diesel BMW (520 lb/ft at the wheels, pulls like a Tesla but is not boring to me)

Eh, no?

One car being objectively faster than another does not mean that it is more fun.

And even if one vehicle is more fun in some total measure, it will not be fun in all the same ways as all other fun vehicles.

There are plenty of people who alternate between something like a modern Mercedes V8 and a classic Mini. There is no question of which one is faster, but it might be the slow one that gives the most joy of sporty driving

911 Turbos are faster than Teslas. Regardless, EVs feel like driving a washing machine. Some people are just not into that, or expect more. I’ve never been excited by any EV I sat down in, no matter how quickly they go 0-60.

I suppose you don't know how to drive a manual either :)

Porsche engines are clearly sport/pleasure engines, not draft engines.

They were causing environmental problems, cities were clogged up with horse shit. I don't know whether that influenced the transition though.

I believe this has a lot to do with the failure of the Maginot line: it had been constructed to slow down an army with horse-drawn logistics (after all, germany had no oil) but the germans did their end run with mechanised units (having researched synfuels in the meantime).

From 1940 to 1943, one can readily explain Axis strategy as an insatiable quest for more oil: no barrels, no Blitz.

EDIT: Lagniappe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Medicine_Crow#World_War_II

Reflecting the interwar German society more broadly; agricultural mechanization was decades behind the US and UK.

The industrial and economic "miracle" of the pre war Nazi regime wasn't spent on tractors either, but on weapons.

You seem to be using “actual” in a way that suggests proportion to population is a key part of the definition. But although a company that served a market for 20 million might well have failed as the market shrank, it also had the opportunity to survive and continue serving an actual market with an actual demand for 7 million actual horses.

> Since then, the nation’s peak demand has fallen by roughly 16% due to improvements in energy efficiency.

Energy demand in UK declining because prices went up which accelerated deindustrialisation and forced people's to use less energy e. g. heat homes less .

What that article doesn't address is the concurrent shift to electrify domestic heating. A worked analysis of the impacts can be found here: https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2022/2/11/how-much-ele...

> Many of the myths you are posting are busted

That article addresses literally just one of my claims

I’m particularly interested in last three points. Do you mind to share some data?

For instance, where one recycle a Tesla battery, say in Poland?

I do not see to many chargers around and I believe the grid is not very modern here. Why do you think it can easily handle millions EVs? What about peak hours like nights? Do you think it will be env friendly, provided that majority of electricity in Poland is produced on coal plants.

EV initial cost is about 5-10 times more than a slightly used ICE in a perfect condition. Such a car car drive decades and will never reach in total spendings even initial cost of EV. I’m not counting charging that may not be very cheap. As electricity prices went up in recent years and may go up more.

When you stating something, think beyond your household. Your statements are not universal.

> Electric motors use low amounts of rare earth metals, or in some cases none. Batteries generally don't use them either.

Maybe the term “rare” was poorly chosen. But mining those metals is the damaging part, not the abundance of the metals.

So my point is still correct.

> Automotive batteries have been demonstrated as >90% recyclable, far better than most materials we consider "recyclable" today such as plastic

Citation needed.

EV batteries are reused in some less demanding domains for a couple of years after their life in EVs. but everything that I’ve read thus far has said recycling the batteries themselves, after their life is done, is still very much in its infancy.

> The electric grid has sufficient capacity to onboard millions of electric cars without issue, and will not be impacted by the transition to EVs

Most country’s electric grids do. That’s the bloody point of a grid. It’s the last mile that’s the issue in some counties.

However I will concede that this point is a little unfair because it’s non-specific.

> Cost of ownership of EVs is significantly lower than ICE vehicles in their class, as is the lifetime carbon footprint

That depends. If you’re an occasional driver and charging your car at home, then the cost of electricity in some countries is going to be greater than the cost of petrol.

However if you travel lots and are heavily use charge stations at super markets et al, then EVs will be much cheaper to run than ICE.

It’s definitely not as clear cut as a lot of EV marketing claims.

(I’ve been adding up the costs just this month because was looking at buying an EV and it just wasn’t a cost saving for my particular requirements).

Considering how early we get rid of cars that are still usable. I wonder how well the cost of ownership actually holds over when a battery change can overshadow many years of maintenance of an ICE.

I really think as soon as batteries get even cheaper and denser there will be no chance for ICEs to be dominant but right now the balance is still against the change.

The grid is quite country specific. For example in the Netherlands there are significant grid capacity issues, so much that people with solar panels are paid on some areas to turn them off.

EV adoption here is high compared to the European average (similar to Norway). Public charging stations in affected areas are reducing capacity or even shutting down at certain times.

So grid capacity is an actual problem here.

You've gone from false to unfalsifiable! (or at least unnecessarily vague).

- Plenty of electric drivetrains still use neodymium for example[0]. Whether it's too much or likely to change soon I don't know, but I feel like that's crucial to making a judgement on the overall harmfulness.

- Battery recycling is happening[1], but so is plastic recycling. Are batteries likely to be recycled, and are the environmental benefits and available profit sufficient to make it significant in the near future? Seems like yes, but it's not clear to me.

- Which grid? Is capacity sufficient just on average, or also at peak demand? Would that still be the case if EV adoption increases in the next five years? (or some timescale to short to build more plants). Looks like the US will do ok[2] but again it's not obvious.

- Does this also apply to buying new? Are you including resale value? What about carbon generated at power stations to provide the electrical power? This is a complex claim and it's hard to do anything with unless it's sharpened and given some numbers or at least references. Seems like price to consumer is roughly the same[3] and CO2 emissions even over about five years of normal use and will improve if the grid moves towards cleaner fuel[4].

Overall I think it's annoying for a commenter who knows the truth to go to the trouble of being convincing, but it's critical for having an interesting discussion that might change someone's mind.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/automa...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/06/27/nx-s1-5019454/ev-battery-recy...

[2] https://news.mit.edu/2023/minimizing-electric-vehicles-impac...

[3] https://www.nada.org/nada/nada-headlines/beyond-sticker-pric...

[4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-vehicles...

I’m not claiming oil mining comes out ahead either. I’m just saying the environmental cost of EV suffers from a lot of greenwashing. They’re not always as green as people like to think.

Unfortunately, this is a massively complicated subject and it’s hard to definitively make claims because there’s also a large element of locality (where you live) and user-specific circumstances (like how long you keep a car, how often you drive, etc)

My original comment was just that it’s easy to say “EV is the future” but really we need to be extremely mindful that EV still has a long way to go itself and thus we shouldn’t be dismissive of any research happening in the automotive industry.

On top of that, the commenter is completely ignorant of the rise of saltwater batteries which don't even use lithium.

Also probably unaware that with the rise of extremely low cost, solar and wind, Fossil fuel use on the grid is economically nonviable long term.

Even so, the fossil fuels consumed on the grid are very likely to be combined cycle natural gas, which has less carbon emissions than have equivalent. Amounts of energy were burned in ice engines.

Also, The energy efficiency of electric vehicles is much higher than an ice car, so if solar and wind do not generate the electricity, it still will emit less carbon than an ice.

The only useful new engine technology I am interested in is an extremely compact recharging engine for use in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. There was something about the inside out rotary engine a couple years ago but nothing has come off of it.

> Even thought I'd agree mass EV would not be carried by the current grid

In many places putting solar panels on roofs and on parking spaces would solve such issue.

Maybe “rare” was a poor choice, but it’s definitely harmful to mine for and the recycling story is far from solved so there’s a serious risk of having these harmful components ending up in landfills (I hope it doesn’t come to that)

Did you actually read my comment and the replies? Because most of the replies didn’t even address the points I was making, let alone debunk it.

Just like with your post. I never actually made any claims about mileages. However as it happens, I do specifically fall into that uneconomical bracket. That’s why I ended up buying petrol despite wanting an EV. I work from home and thus rarely drive. EV isn’t yet ready for my specific use case. It will get there, but it’s not there today.

And thus we are back to the crux of point is was making: that this topic is far more complicated than the OP suggested.

Oh absolutely. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t be investing in EV nor renewables. I’m just saying the case with EVs isn’t as simple as some like to generalise.

Well, in a big city I wouldn't call a 5m long car that drinks 12 or more liters "practical". Also it's an expensive and high maintenance car even when functioning properly (I'd be scared of the bill for changing those tires or doing Porsche's maintenance...)

But, you said it: sweet, comfy, luxurious, funnier. Valid reasons, of course, but different :-)

Unsurprisingly, Lotus (aka the maker of the car that Tesla converted into their Roadster) did not completely abandon their lightweight sports car identity in the BEV age. The Evija advertised with a range of 315 km.

Who says so? Batteries been available for hundred years yet we keep talking about fusion being the future, and we have fission. Which both drive turbines, which are a thing from the past? No? What is joke and when?

To me is a joke that we keep heating water to move magnets to get energy in 2024 with all the quantum entanglement, Johnson teleportation, lasers, etc. engineering magic happening around. And we do what? heat water to move magnets to squeez energy? So why is then hydrogen bad, just because it goes boom? Plenty of things we use daily go boom now and then, not meaning recent news, but in general.

I also invite you to take a look at the Tokamak and then try to argue again that metal tubes wired around to pump liquids and do some combustion is not the future.

> What constitutes “walking back”?

Legally+Economically. After seeing how badly their cars were doing against Chinese EVs, it seems the EV-only mandates in the EU and US are on shaky ground; only heavy tariffs on imported cars seem to be giving local producers a chance. I do not think they will figure it out by the 2030-ish targets, and bet that European and American companies will be allowed to sell combustion engine cars after that.

> marking a 16.3% increase compared to the same period last year

This is buoyed a lot by growth in China (which is not nothing, I guess), but growth in Europe and the Americas is slowing.

I need to check that source but I guess is heavily per country. In Southern Europe is under 5%, south from the US border between 0 to 1 % (source: per country Car Makers Association report)

Globally, if I recall, you need 20 years to replace the whole global fleet (so around 5% replacement rate). Let’s assume this global number is fixed (installed base is growing, as more vehicles are being created that destroyed, actually)

1/7 is 15%. 15% of 5% is 0,75%. So this means that every year 0,75% of global installed base is replaced by EVs. So 130y for full replacement?

Yes, the 1/7 weight will increase. But so will expand base. Even if suddenly today every car made now on the planet is EV only, iCE will still be around for 20-30 years.

Not the op but in NZ there has been a significant drop in demand due to removal of subsidies and introduction of a distance-based tax (road user charge) for EVs.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/09/15/car-importers-stuck-with-...

“In 2023 January through August, one in four new light passenger vehicles sold were EVs. Fast forward to 2024 and EVs make up just one in 11 new light passenger vehicles sold”

That's a flawed analogy. Datacenter draw X power to do X work, and people using them don't care about the brand or aesthetics. Give techies and companies less power hungry alternatives and look how quick they will migrate. That is quite different for cars, unless their perceived value has nothing to do with their #1 function, which brings us back to my post: most people buying luxury cars give more importance to appearance rather than any environmental issue. I completely understand, but cannot agree.

It’s a ridiculous argument. You are typing this comment just because this damn not environmental friendly data center exists. But you pay nothing for HN. Hence someone’s do. That maybe this damn dude who made a fortune. But more than that, this dude has had to work hard long ago so that the data Center could be built and some nerds have got their jobs.

The main innovation in modern electric cars isn't just about swapping fuel with electricity, but eliminating all junk in between that wasted power only to overcome ICE inherent flaws. More simple electronics aside, clutch, gearbox, then driveshaft are all gone, and they contributed to a huge waste of power, which burned a lot of fuel for nothing. This is so bad that where possible and economically feasible (trains and ships) they use mixed diesel-electric pairs with the diesel engine working as generator so that it would always run at maximum torque not being forced to start from zero rpm and not having its speed related with train and ship speed. The electric engine is indeed older than internal combustion one, however what makes it a better option also for cars required modern development, especially in batteries and rare earth magnets which would have been unthinkable only a few decades ago.