22 » MARCH 2021 » WWW.MADEIN.IE
In 1872, American George
Brayton invented the first
commercial liquid-fuelled internal
combustion engine. In 1876,
Nicolaus Otto, working with
Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm
Maybach, patented the compressed charge,
four-stroke cycle engine. Three years’ later
Karl Benz patented a reliable two-stroke gas
engine and by 1892, Rudolf Diesel developed
the very first compression ignition engine.
This course of events revolutionised the
way humans all over the would travel for
generations to come. The combustion engine
was here to stay.
So, imagine if you saw the following
headline in your newspaper tomorrow
morning: “All urban petrol stations stop
selling petrol and diesel, with most urban
repair garages facing bankruptcy”.
While electric cars have been around for
years, the pace of change is accelerating faster
than anyone expected. Prime Minister Boris
Johnson has announced his ‘Ten Point Plan
for a Green Industrial Revolution’. One of the
ten points includes a focus on transforming
our national infrastructure to better support
electric vehicles, with the end goal being to
eradicate the sale of petrol and diesel cars in
the UK by 2030, 10 years earlier than planned.
The Prime Minister has said: “Our green
industrial revolution will be powered by the
wind turbines of Scotland and the North
East, propelled by the electric vehicles made
in the Midlands and advanced by the latest
technologies developed in Wales, so we can
look ahead to a more prosperous, greener
future.”
Whether we meet this ambitious goal, only
time will tell. but once Electric Vehicle
(EV) ownership hits a certain tipping point,
the ability to run an Internal Combustion
Engine car (ICE) will become impractical in
many areas. After allowing for pollution
control measures, even 25% electric car
ownership would mean virtually no-one
driving in an urban area would be using an
ICE vehicle.
Many people still remain uncertain
whether or not electric cars will become the
majority. However, many are equally wrong
believing they will also slowly take over from
petrol and diesel-powered vehicles with no
other side effects.
Given the average car on the UK roads is
eight years old, it would take 12-15 years for
ICE vehicles to slowly disappear, even if ICEs
were banned tomorrow. That could be the
case for the UK as a whole, but in areas of
high urban and suburban populations, the
change is likely to arrive much faster than
anyone believes. Why? Infrastructure.
Changes to charging
At the moment, most electric car users
charge their vehicles at home and remain
within their vehicle’s single-charge range for
about 99% of the time. But around half of
car owners do not have off-street parking, so
will require some kind of
commercial charging system as opposed to
private. Rather than the current slow
charging via hundreds of thousands of
stand-alone charging points, it is more likely
that high-density rapid charging at a smaller
number of ‘fuel’ stations will dominate, in
AUTOMOTIVE
THE RISE AND FALL
OF THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE
Peter Debenham, senior consultant at Ignite Exponential, the
innovation business arm of engineering and design consultancy,
Plextek, traces one of the most significant inventions of the last
150 years to modern-day burnout
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