this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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I don't think so. I am not sure, if air cooled engines are even capable of meeting today's emission (noise and pollution) requirements.
Furthermore cars with internal combustion engines are currently in the process of being phased-out in favour of battery-electric cars and many manufacturers allocate less and less resources to engine development. The goal seems to be to make existing engines compatible with upcoming emission standards (e. g. Euro 7), phase-out unprofitable engines before new emission standards, and allocate the rest of development resources to new battery-electric platforms and models.
Such a boring future we are living in :/ Well, there is hoping that enthusiast scene won't die with it
Reducing carbon emissions > “fun”
It's like we can't do both
Why is an ICE more “fun” than an electric motor other than “makes big noise”?
Likely due to how an ICE works compared to an electric one, if you actually like working on them. Modding an ICE is leagues more interesting and complicated than… well, good luck modifying an electric motor is all I can say.
That said, driving an electric car is probably more fun, unless you are doing a long canyon run or you want a light vehicle.
vroom vroom > .....
Not to mention air cooled VW and Porsche engines only made like 60HP. Far from a "fun" engine unless you find things like getting a full night's rest or eating rice cakes "fun."
What a load of crap you are spewing.
Porche 911 GT2 (993) produced 331kw (443hp) with an air cooled engine.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_911_GT2?wprov=sfla1
Well I stand corrected! That's an incredible amount of power from a small, air-cooled engine.
I've learned to accept it. With mandatory driver assistance systems in Europe and the US, there is no going back to simple cars without proprietary software anyways.
And climate change already hits quite hard where I live. In winter we don't get snow anymore (we used to get several weeks with snow and sub-zero (°C) temperatures up until a decade ago), which makes me depressed every single winter to the point I am considering to move, and every summer we have to endure droughts and heat waves now, even though our summers used to be moist and mild.
It is overdue to make transportation much more sustainable and we unfortunately (as I like internal combustion engines) can't afford to keep extracting and burning fossil fuels.
But there definitely is joy to be found in electric cars and other modes of transportation. I actually started to embrace cycling more in the last couple of months and I learned to enjoy the simple technology of a bicycle. It certainly is a different kind of fun though ...
Doesn't mean we have to burn fossil fuels. Ethanol is cool as fuck. Less range but more power and you can make it with various methods.
As for bicycles, I cycled for many years and worked at a bicycle shop. Their "gearbox" design is horrible. Their durability is tragic. For commute I am using electric scooter now, much less reliability issues. I hate the tires on bicycles and scooters though, seriously need to get tubeless.
If your bike's durability is an issue that's on you for either not doing basic maintenance or buying a piece of junk.
Lol, lmao even
The most used mean of transportation in the world has durability issues 🙄
Compare how much needs to be spent to ride vs to drive, even if you were to change the chain and cassettes every 10k km...
No wonder you're asking if air cooled engines could make a comeback.
One issue with ethanol is it is usually made from biomass. Biomass is getting criticised for eating into food production and nature. Burning it is also not emission-free, which is a problem in countries or regions that mandate "zero emission" for new vehicles by a certain date, as an internal combustion engine can, as far as I know, only ever be "low emission" but never "zero emission".
Other types of synthetic fuels also exist, but, as far as I know, most of them also use biomass as their source or share their main problem with hydrogen: They need huge amounts of electricity for production, which means we would need much more renewable energy (some sources claim 3 to 5 times as much as charging a battery directly) to power the same amount of vehicles. More energy needed for production and transportation also means higher fuel price.
Battery-electric cars are already quite well established and they have large political support, lots of research money and there are a variety of models available for almost any price point. The general public will most likely adopt the most well-established, economical and practical "zero emissions" technology on the market, which at the moment appears to be the battery-electric car.
This leaves synthetic fuels to enthusiasts, which are happy to pay the higher fuel price and don't mind the additional maintenance of an internal combustion engine. But will there be enough enthusiasts in regions that don't demand "zero emission" vehicles to justify large-scale production of synthetic fuels and engines? I highly doubt that, which means if synthetic fuels ever become available in passenger cars, they will, in my opinion, most likely be exclusive to low production models (e. g. Porsche e-fuel production, etc.) and therefore only be available to rich people.
tl;dr: Maybe my assessment is flawed, but for the meantime I would suggest not getting your hopes up too high for ethanol saving the internal combustion engine.