The fundamental manufacturing change/move from ICE is already happening, most new car adverts are for EV's, there are very few plugging their ICE and 2035 is only 12 years away. Manufacturers will have to start to recoup their massive ongoing investment especially as the move away from adapting ICE chassis(to EV use) to full dedicated EV chassis becomes the norm. Spares for the more recent clean ICE engines will become an issue once they fall outside the manufacturers spares support period, older less complicated engines without engine management systems will continue to have the independent of manufacturer support and spares system they current have . The closer we move to 2030/5 the second hand values of ICE cars will start to fall, making spares plus availability issues etc and the cost of running them less cost effective and they will be scrapped.
I've read that the Government plans to increase the ethanol content up from E10 to possibly E15 in the not too distant future, the recently developed turbo ICE in my SLC surprisingly cannot handle fuel above E10.
Add in to the mix that the various governments across Europe are going to introduce additional taxation of the fossil fuel companies reducing reducing their ability to generate funds internally to invest in oil exploration and exploitation. Most major banks are now as part of their green strategy not investing in new fossil fuel exploration and you start to have a perfect storm of dwindling oil output from existing fields, with resultant oil price hikes. Action is already being taken thru the courts against the hydrocarbon companies for not cleaning up their act.
At some point, the ICE will be directly competing with the plastics industry (the biggest consumer of oil output) for increasingly scant oil resources. We have absolutely no game plan to ween ourselves off plastics, which touch every element of our lives.
So unless some other fuel like hydrogen takes over and current ICE engines can safely and cheaply be converted to its use, I think there is a combination of events that may quite quickly cause oil prices to soar and be beyond the price point that allows current ICE's to be run by a vast majority of the population, availability made worst by the diminishing number of petrol stations in the coming years. The UK government has already indicated it sees green hydrogen being used in public transport and for heavy transport not for the car.
Last edited by JohnHarris; 21/02/23 10:23 AM.
