Internal Combustion Engine vs. Electric Machine, this seems a famous game these days. Media, politicians, OEMs, car owners – all of them have their arguments and for one or the other reasons, they have their vision of where they place themselves in this fight. There is a lot of emotion and mistrust, misinformation and the claim of misinformation, aggression, and response. Diesel bashing here, pointing to insufficient range, burning batteries and recharging of plugin battery-electric vehicles with mobile ICE devices there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The worrying thing to me is that even in our engineering world you get the impression that you have to choose and you have to choose apriori<\/em>. It seems that even the world of powertrain engineers has become bipolar, you can either be pro-ICE or pro-E, you can either hug your internal combustion engine or tell the people ICE is dead, you can either tell people there is not enough Lithium on earth or oil, you say a V8 is music or it\u2019s noise, you say too much NOx, Soot or CO2 stems from traffic or from power plants, there\u2019s nothing in between. ICE engineers seem to fear someone takes away their beloved baby, E-guy seem to claim the work of thousands of engineers should go to the trash bin right away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I call this the powertrain bias<\/strong>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, honestly, like with many topics I have faced in my life I don\u2019t know who is right and I would claim it\u2019s not easy to tell that for anyone. We live in an increasingly complex world and there are many forces at work, legislation, customer expectation, politics, financial interests and finally human emotions. So, as an engineer, you try to rely on something that should give you the answer: pure science. Then you realize: even numbers can be bend, misinterpreted, miscommunicated. It\u2019s clear that oil won\u2019t last forever and that Lithium doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s clear that some may love the sound of an engine and others love the sound of silence. It\u2019s like with anything \u2013 even in science – any party will come up with their study of proving they are right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I truly believe it is this powertrain bias that is the most dangerous thing an engineer can jump onto in a world of incredibly fast-paced change.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n