“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” immortal, witty words from the pen of Mark Twain. Words that can be easily attributed to the internal combustion engine. Remember, it was only a few years ago when headlines and analysts confidently predicted its demise. It was a feeding frenzy, one report feeding the other, driving the narrative. “The days of Dino-juice are over,” they proclaimed. “End of the ICE age,” others screamed. Politicians ‘pitched-in’ with arbitrary end-of-life dates, plucked from thin air.
For a time, the world swallowed the bitter pill. Countries whose economies depended on the production and manufacture of internal combustion engines worked hard to switch over to EVs. The internal combustion engine, however, is still standing, still thriving. And far from sliding off a slippery slope, hybrids are getting better and better. Even more poignant, the almost weekly admission from carmakers of EV rollbacks, projects that are delayed indefinitely, stillborn, or swapped to hybrid drive systems. Almost every car manufacturer has done this. Unless, of course, it is Chinese or Tesla. And the less said about ‘Muskmobiles,’ the better. For the company that started it all and changed the world to just go ‘off the boil’; wow. Insane. Tesla is now focusing on building robots! One thing’s for sure, Musk hasn’t managed to garner an 840 billion dollar fortune by being behind the curve. So, what does he know that we don’t?
On the face of it, there are a few urgent issues that plague EV sales. Firstly, unless you have an extremely low-cost base, it’s very difficult to make money manufacturing and selling EVs. This is unlikely to change as long as China holds all the battery cards. And why do used EVs drop in value like stones? Also important, fear of environmental collapse is no longer a sales driver. Remember Al Gore’s famous speech in 1998, making many doomsday predictions, none of which have wrought catastrophic change. Then, of course, there are the questionable green credentials of EVs. And did you know that the single largest producer of CO2 globally is the production of electricity?
Sure, renewable generation is increasing, and EVs are getting better. They are also important for India, as they reduce our oil import bill, and with our low-cost base, we can make and sell them affordably. But EVs aren’t progressing at anything like the rate promised, and what’s becoming increasingly clear is that internal combustion engines are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Electrification of ICE engines is making them more efficient and competitive, synthetic fuels and blends will take the game ahead, and then, there’s the fact that the better ICE engines get, the more pressure there will be on EVs to get their act together. Racing improves the breed, after all. And you don’t want to put all your eggs in one imperfect basket? Do you? So, are we deep in the middle of an ICE age? Or is this ICE 2?
Uday Singh
Rishaad Mody
Sergius Barretto
Avik Chattopadhyay
