[cucumber3732842]

>This is one of those "the internet is a fad, it'll never catch on" moments. EV's are here to stay.

Not saying you're one of them (there are other people here who fit the bill much better) but like with anything else the people on the internet peddling grand narratives lacking of nuance are delusional fanboys, malevolent liars or some combination of the two. EVs are absolutely going to win certain market segments and take good chunks out of others. Unless the government gets out of the business of regulating the crap out of electrical infrastructure at great cost to us all there will likely be a whole bunch of heavier use cases where they just can't pencil out barring some yet unforeseeable breakthrough in the basic physics of batteries.

I think the auto industry is wise to think about the upcoming ~30yr transition period where all that shakes itself out and how to invest the right amount into keeping ICE stuff competitive but without investing to the detriment of winning the EV segment, etc, etc, standard big business stuff.

[adjejmxbdjdn]

ICE -> EV is not a 30 year transition.

I’d be surprised if there’s a consequential ICE industry after 2040 (that doesn’t mean there won’t be ICE cars being driven, just that they won’t be selling outside niche industries after 2040).

The collapse of ICE vehicles will happen sooner rather than later due to a few fundamental reasons.

- China has gone all in on EVs. It’s hard to compete against the Chinese and they’re unlikely to ever develop the skills and capabilities to develop cheap ICE vehicles.

- The Strait of Hormuz fiasco has pretty much convinced countries about not being dependent on gas. Electricity is an energy abstraction. It allows you to run your EV no matter where you get your energy from because almost all sources of energy can easily be converted to electricity. Running your vehicles on this abstraction provides a lot of sovereign flexibility.

- ICE infrastructure is incredibly expensive to maintain. You have so many dedicated gas stations spread out all over that use up valuable space and resources, but also then need to be supplied with gas coming from all over the world. As EVs take meaningful share from ICE vehicles, the cost of maintaining this infrastructure for each ICE vehicle driver will keep rising. As demand goes down, gas stations will start shutting down, and then the distance between 2 gas stations or your home and thr closes fast station may increase, and range anxiety will start working against ICE and in favor of EVs.

- ICE vehicles are 100+ years into their development. EVs are just getting started. And they’re almost close to parity. It’s not clear how ICE will maintain any edge outside of very niche use cases as EVs continue to improve.

[ff317]

I agree with you, for the mass consumer car market (individual/family transport) as a whole. It's coming fast. However, the current EV technology (mostly batteries + charging) is not a good fit for a whole lot of edge cases, and in the aggregate they matter, too, and thus the ICE engine industry won't really go away anytime soon:

* General-purpose Semis for commercial hauling. Yes, there's some EV Semis on the road today - pilot projects, or specific routes on specific schedules. But there's a lot of general purpose semi-hauling that happens every day on odd/long routes without sufficient chargers in the right places, and they need much bigger chargers. And then there's the specialty semis that carry large/wide loads. I see them almost every day in my area, carrying large chunks of power substations, heavy manufacturing equipment, blades for wind turbines, etc.

* Fire trucks, Ambulances, Tow trucks, Police cars - For various similar reasons, it's tricky with some of these, although in well-constrained cases and with extra vehicles on tap as backup (when the other one is low on charge in an emergency), maybe can kinda work, eventually.

* "Personal" trucks that see heavy towing/hauling use (think: hauling a livestock trailer or farm equipment or heavy materials (or maybe an EV race car!), possibly long distances on a regular basis). The battery range really suffers when you put all the extra weight and drag on by towing, and people aren't willing to turn what was a 5 hour diesel trip into a 9 hour trip with supercharger stops (more time in the heat with animals, more time on the road in general, and do you have to disconnect the trailer just to reach the charge cable?)

* Backup generator ICE engines - home, datacenter, industrial use, etc. The problem here is mostly runtime and peak watts of output vs cost. You can use a battery-based solution for most of these cases, but it currently costs prohibitively more for the same performance specs. When they're being used in austere environments, sometimes there's no electric grid to even charge from, so slap on a massive solar array cost, too.

* All military use of ICE engines in general (transport, generators, etc) - Not insignificant in scope and scale, and obviously they're not going to run EVs or find chargers on battlefields.

These cases will diminish over time, especially as we continue to make advances in charging and especially battery technology, but it will probably take a few decades because there's science challenges, not just engineering ones. The military case might never go away.

[thelastgallon]

ICE cars/vehicles aren't going to disappear overnight. There are enough used ICE vehicles for ALL of the edge cases and a ton more for the next 20 years. There is no need to buy new ICE vehicles.

[bruce511]

Look, sure. No one is saying "no ICE ever". Some people still ride horses.

125 years ago cities were built around horses. Stabling. Breeding. Feeding. Grooming. Street cleaning (turns our horses poop a Lot). By 20 years later that's all gone.

Sure horses survived in rural areas. Sure the Amish use them today as then. But the horse-based industry has (in real terms) vanished.

ICE is headed the same way. It will exist, but no daily-driver car will be ICE. EVs win, because in cities they are better. Because they're cheaper to own.

If Ford wants to own the ICE niches, fine. But it won't be cars.

[ff317]

It's not quite that simple though. A lot of these edge cases are necessary for everyone to live their cushy little city lives. It's not a matter of outmoded things. We will still need ambulances, and we will still need livestock trailers, and everything else on my list, for all of the foreseeable future. Unless batteries and charging gets a lot better, we'll still be manufacturing and improving ICE engines for many applications. Just not simple passenger cars.

[usrnm]

> ICE -> EV is not a 30 year transition

> I’d be surprised if there’s a consequential ICE industry after 2040

It started in the 00s, really took off around 2010.

And don't forget that 2040 is in 14 years. You can buy plenty of brand new ICE cars today, the majority of them will definitely still be around in 14 years.

[triceratops]

> there will likely be a whole bunch of heavier use cases where [EVs] just can't pencil out

Do the big Detroit automakers also build a lot of semis, garbage trucks, snow plows, and fire engines? I can see those types of vehicles being ICE holdouts. But certainly not anything you can drive with a regular driver license.

[conk]

I’d argue that garbage trucks, snow plows and fire engines are candidates for EVs. They are large and heavy with plenty of space for batteries. Typically used in predefined routes, traveling less than 100 miles per day.

I would gladly vote for a bond to fund electric trash trucks if that resulted in quieter weekly trash service.

[Symbiote]

More than half of the garbage trucks I see in Copenhagen are EVs. The first was introduced in 2022.

https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/news-stories/stories/2025/...

I haven't seen a fire truck EV, but those exist in other cities.

[fpoling]

And they are so much nicer. Way less noise and pollution and much better maneuverability on narrow streets or on slippery roads in winter.

[cucumber3732842]

I meant more like bog standard 1500-5500 sized trucks and vans. Depending upon the actual fine details of the use case it's gonna be hard to make the math math.

Your local DPW with a lot of money for new over spec'd trucks, friendly permitting office approving their permit for charging infra, strict 9-5, etc might make it pencil out for their facility maintenance. But a landscaper who's engaged in fundamentally the same work but out of rented space, a landlord that won't get preferential treatment on the install of charging infra, won't qualify for the same fleet discount, works way harder than 9-5, etc, etc. might not make it pencil out.

Local delivery can potentially make great use of EVs, but if you turn up the operational tempo or the range and have drivers slip seating or really racking up the miles it can be a non-starter vs just buying the same thing in non-ev. And of course the fixed infrastructure cost questions still apply.

You might get hybrids but you also have to remember weight matters in a lot of these applications. Can't be rolling around over weight as part of normal business. And a lot of these applications are trying to stay under 10k while still having as much cargo capacity as possible.

[floxy]

The current Chevrolet Silverado EV has a 200 kWh battery option. Even with towing reducing the range to say 200 miles, you could do a lot of pickupy things with that.

[bruce511]

Yes, it won't happen all at once. And some use cases will survive longer.

I'm not sure size is the qualifier though. Electric busses are becoming more and more common. I think city vehicles make good candidates for EV - they don't typically go far from home. They are cheaper to build and buy, and much cheaper to run.

The reason I think EVs win is because of the "support system" ICE vehicles need. And as ICE share decreases that support system also starts to dwindle. So those services get more expensive. I'm thinking gas stations, mechanics, parts and so on. It becomes a death spiral.

It's not unlike the switch from mainframes to PCs. At the beginning there wasn't a contest, but now mainframe skills are hard to find and hence very expensive. So the market for them goes down. Indeed most mainframe suppliers (DEC, SUN et al) died off ages ago.