The ICE Is Dying. Long Live EVs!

The leading automotive industry news outlet Auto Evolution has published an editorial saying that the death of the internal combustion engined (ICE) car is certain - and not just due to the climate crisis. The news outlet has set out a number of themes that are leading to the demise of the use of rotten dinosaur entrails to power our transport. Let’s take a look at these. 

The Climate 

We can’t ignore climate change. This has led to many leading nations and blocs to ban the future sale of ICEs. Though their commitments (or lack thereof) at the Glasgow climate summit last November annoyed and dismayed many environmentalists, there are other factors that mean they aren’t likely to back down on driving towards zero emissions transport at least. 

With new legislation and incentives to get rid of ICE vehicles this is leading to big changes throughout the industry as we will discuss later. 

Pollution In Cities 

China’s killer smogs are known worldwide. Even if their government is known to be reticent where it comes to climate change (calling itself a ‘developing country’ and other things to avoid the issue), it has a serious public health problem from emissions other than methane and CO2. Nitrogen and sulphur dioxides as well as particulate matter from fossil fuel burning are killing millions and incapacitating millions of its population, ultimately impacting its economy. 

Other, more climate friendly countries’ cities are taking measures to ban ICE vehicles too. There are a number of cities in the UK putting in clean air zones - Oxford, Manchester and Bristol are following London - but other major world cities are banning the vehicles altogether. This is driving the low emissions vehicle manufacturing industry as demand surges. 

Oil Is Running Out 

You want to know why the price of petrol and diesel is hitting silly new heights? It’s not green taxation that has been frozen or cut in recent years in the UK. The US with its light touch fuel taxation is seeing a boom in demand for EVs as people sweat over the price of fuel too. 

The main price driver in fossil fuels worldwide is scarcity. Sanctions against Russia, one of the world’s biggest producers is heightening this issue. Prices were already heading to ridiculous levels before Putin lost his mind and invaded Ukraine - the much heralded ‘peak oil’ is here. 

This again is driving the market for buying EVs. In the UK with its bad electricity costs, you can typically drive an EV for 9.3p per mile on a standard variable rate electricity tariff of 28p/kWh. On a typical diesel car you’re paying 16p/mile. A 6p a mile difference soon mounts up over 7,000 miles a year - that’s £420 a year out of your pocket. 

Industry Changes   

With the boom in EV sales and general collapse in ICE sales, this is impacting the automotive industry. Why spend £millions or £billions designing a new ICE engine when you won’t be able to sell any in 10 years time? 

It isn’t just the big automotive players that are getting hit. The companies that supply them are seeing significant drops in demand for engine and other parts that go into ICE cars and vans. Getting smaller and smaller orders they can’t sell them at the same margins to the automotive companies so are putting their prices up per unit to manage. This in turn hits the costs involved in making the vehicles. 

In short the demand for EVs is leading to a cost increase in ICE components and therefore costs. The ecosystem of EV and ICE car manufacturing isn’t a separate and parallel issue but an ecosystem where in an almost Darwinian case of survival of the fittest, the EV is out competing the ICE and killing it off that way. 

There are redoubts where ICE vehicles will still be used for a while to come. Large tracts of Africa and South America haven’t the EV infrastructure such as chargers and even electricity grids to make it possible. But these are in trouble too - they aren’t of sufficient economic strength to drive new innovations as China, Europe, the US and the richer SE Asian countries are. These are outlying branches that will wither and die as the main roots of demand for ICEs (the world’s leading economies) die off too. 

Capitalism Is Killing ICEs, Not Pure Environmentalism 

From what we describe here, you can see that it isn’t ‘woke hippies’ killing ICE cars. In a large part they can’t afford new cars! It is raw red meat-eating, well-off capitalists killing them off as economics have finally got to the point that they are no longer viable. 

The ICE is dying. Long live the EV!