The future of classic cars?
 

Without wanting to get into an heated discussion over air pollution etc etc.

I just wonder if there will be a place for classic cars in the future. Will we be allowed to start their engines, let alone actually drive them, and that's if you can get hold of any fuel that they will run on.

I suspect electric conversions will be the way forward

They do an off the shelf EV "V8 crate motor" now!.:p:




https://i.imgur.com/EkBvIKpl.jpg

Electrical sensors will be the issue
 

I think availability of electrical sensors will be the issue. Older classic cars did not have so many sensors - 90's cars have them everywhere - MAF, MAP, crank, ABS, idle stepper motor, etc.

I have a 90's FIAT and cannot get rear ABS sensors anywhere. Bosch stopped making them and that is that. Commonality with Alfa's of the period has not helped find one.

As the base is larger it maybe better for MG Rover as at least some of these parts are shared with BMW's.

Well, classics got an exemption from the London ULEZ, but not such good news for 'future classics' though .....

It was reported earlier this year that the CEO of Highways England has said that we will not be driving our classic cars in 30 years. It was said he has no authority so how can he say this, but he is in the know and is part of the consultations for future transport planning. He said fuel availability and pollution control will make them unusable and suggested that the EVs now on the road will be the classics of the future.

Electric power conversions will possibly be an alternative for some of the more exotic and valuable models, but the average run of the mill classics that do not have a great value will not be financially viable to convert. The 70s and 80s classics now worth £3000/£5000 that are kept on the road by enthusiasts on a budget, which is most, will never have the conversions done so most will end up scrapped or rusting away in a garage.

Sadly its the future I see for my Triumph Dolomite as the values will eventually fall as the deadline gets closer making it less likely. At least if I'm still around I will be in my late 90s so driving may be a past pleasure. Enjoy them whilst we can.

There is always the option of converting it to something else, á la Cuba? LINK and another LINK. Necessity being the mother of invention, it will come down to how much the need is.

HERE

I think that some still will be converted. The current (pun intended) principles would still apply. Scrap your current (not intended lol) car and buy a new electric car, and lose the conversion cost in depreciation, or buy a second hand one with someone else's problems (and possibly a failing battery too).

I have read that a target for phasing out fossil fuel sales in some countries
has been as early as 2050, which considering the ban on sales of new ICE cars is 2030 (earlier in some places!) is not that unrealistic really. That seems such a long time away, but when you consider the Mazda MX5 was released 30 years ago, it doesnt seem that long.

As with everything, there will be workarounds, and prices will become more affordable (not necessarily affordable lol, but more affordable). Especially as there will be an increase in scrapped electric cars around.

I personally, would love an electric car, not for the environment or running costs, but simply for the instant torque and smoothness.

I have driven a BMW I3, and was left gobsmacked.

I too think the average classics days are numbered.

Best buy a Prius now before they start to rocket in value lol

In 20 or 30 years we will see classic electric cars. Honda Insight and if you could get find a GM EV1, I reckon will be the first of the 'modern' era of electric cars. I do think though that compatibility will be more of an issue - think along the lines of floppy disc drives, or aging computer software formats and drivers.

Battery powered cars will be taxed I reckon based on how they are constructed - (trying to avoid an environmental discussion lol) - in what gases they produce whilst charging or if they fail, involved in accidents etc. A bit like today with the misinformation of the past of how diesel was best etc. (but lets not go there)

No please let’s NOT go there :D

Like all things technology only leaps forward when there is a need. Old adage now but remember the first cell phones? Size of a brick with batteries that came in a suitcase.

In a decade I expect there to have been a couple of technological leaps and the electric vehicles we will have by 2029 will be vast improvements over what we have now

I doubt that electrical is more than a short lived fad.
They are really not any better than internal combustion engines, unless the electricity is generated by water, wind or sun.

The only seriously good solution is hydrogen. Created with clean energy and stored suitably. That would solve a whole host of problems and, I think, be the way forward.

I agree electrical cars are fads and the next generation is yet to made, and oil is in short supply and Electric cars take too many barrels to make them... combustion engines may make a return in another format of fuel instead of good old four star, electrical nope, never.........used and scrapped and no future in those here today gone on friday....

combustion engine with another fuel intake of ???? YES THATS THE WAY

I agree, I can't see it being electric. We had electric milk floats when I was a kid, so they have had many years to develop electric vehicles, but still a long long way off yet.

I’m not convinced that there will be any ‘classic’ cars in the future, certainly not ones that the ‘average Joe’ can tinker with in their man cave (or indeed woman cave)
Cars are already getting to the stage where the technology onboard and the equipment required for repair/diagnostics is beyond the reach of amateur mechanics/enthusiasts and it’s only likely to get worse, especially with EVs and any future tech.

There’s hopefully going to have to be some sort of scheme or legislation to allow the (limited) use of the classics we already have, otherwise there’s going to be an uprising! :D

im not bothered really just hope i keep,on driving and keep the old 75 on the road for as long as i can.. be time the electric cars come into full force ill be 94 years old thats if i make it that far lol rgds mark

Petrols: Convert it to 'burn' hydrogen and we can drive as long as we want as there is only water coming out of the exhaust ;)
It is like lpg, only the tank needs a lot of pressure, but nothing that cannot be done. This is my plan for the petrol classics, for the diesel 75 that I want to keep, put 'blue' diesel in it and it should be ok, or not?

Rob

AS LONG AS IT IS NOT RED!! or police man Bill will be along LOL

I believe technology is regulated, it has to be as otherwise the world would implode. Manufacturers already have the future in their hands, but too much too soon is not always a good thing. :shrug:

The slow progression of innovation is preferred to help the global economy, but the powers that be already have the future mapped out, its just a case of guiding the the rest of us through a transition period so not to cause panic. :eek:

How many of the current generation of 'yoof' will be prepared to get their hands dirty in this 'entitled day and age' where everything is if it cant be replaced, it cant be fixed? It is this that will reduce the 'need' for the knowledge to become an 'average joe' who can tinker with their cars.

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I was looking for something else on Youtube, and one of the suggested videos was THIS. Audi A5 Quattro. If there is a will, there will be a way.

I do sometimes regret selling my Scimitar GTE. Despite being a 3 litre V6 Ford Essex engine it ran so clean it impressed MOT testers every year. A rebuilt carburettor helped achieve that.
Fuel, compression and a spark and it would run. No ECU, no ABS or other gizmos. It was all down to the driver and I soon learned to drive in snow in my Austin 1100 and Ford Cortina. Today I push a snow button.
How can an EV be a classic? Will people find them nostalgic and quaint because the range was only 150 miles? Cars then may do 250 miles ha ha.
There has always been outstanding engineering that has captured the enthusiast. A friend is heavily into Riley motor cars. One from the 1920’s and another from early 1930’s. Stunning how much quality engineering of the time made them what they were. Over engineered, yes. 2.5 ton car pulled by a 1.5 litre engine. They were made to the requirements of the day rather than cutting edge future vision of what a car should become. They were carriages pulled by an engine instead of horses.
I really can’t see the EV on offer from loads of manufacturers and being broadly identical being desirable. Add the fact that manufacturers are sharing platforms and technology and even merging to save development costs it will become classic badge engineering. Sound familiar?

It's only in the past 10-12 years that serious R&D has gone into producing mainstream electric cars using Li-Ion tech. Milk floats of days gone by ran on lead acid batteries, which were nowhere near as energy dense. Li-Ion may well be superseded relatively soon, but EVs will be here for decades to come.

How will a mass shift to hydrogen take place when the cost of electricity to run an EV is already significantly lower than the cost of conventional fossil fuels, even at the priciest rapid charge outlets, while hydrogen, by contrast, is substantially more expensive than petrol or diesel. If you already bristle at paying £70 or more to fill one of our 75s, imagine how unhappy you'd be at the prospect of paying over £200 to cover similar distances on hydrogen. Of course, that assumes you can find an outlet at which to purchase some, as there are only a handful of these across the UK - four, last time I looked. By comparison, there are currently over 26000 public connectors for EVs in the UK alone. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are also more expensive and complex than today's EVs, being essentially a hydrogen-powered generator plus battery on wheels.

The cost and technical challenges of safely storing hydrogen in small vehicles is another significant barrier to its adoption in personal transport. Where I think it has a greater chance of making inroads is in mass/large scale transportation - trains, buses, bulk road transport (i.e. HGVs) and shipping.

I don't think EVs are a short-term phenomenon. As mentioned elsewhere, Daimler have announced that they will no longer be developing internal combustion engines - they see their future as electric. Volvo had previously announced similar, that by around 2024/2025 their entire fleet will be either hybrid or electric. Moreover, the investment in infrastructure that has already taken place in terms of the charging network - which is still only a fraction of what is needed - is significant, on a scale which means it won't simply be binned 20 years from now. Even the Beeching cuts to the railways didn't actually discard the entire network!

Back to the question, it seems that the average old car will just disappear, and the really valuable classics will probably be converted to electric.

As someone said, the BMW i3 and the like will be the classic of tomorrow.

Hey well, I guess we are just fighting the change because of our love affair with the internal combustion engine, and everything that goes with it, the sound, the smell etc etc.

I have been to many drag race meetings and the sound and smell of a top fuel dragster just overloads the sensors.

Electric drag racing just doesn't cut it no matter how quick they may be.:getmecoat:

I dont think this will be the case, you can have as many EV points you like but the national grid is on its knees, at 98% capacity in GB, it wont take all the 9 till 5 workers coming home and plugging IN, black outs are happening more and more, and that cheap electric, who's going to pay for that cost ? once petrol/Diesel , is out the way? yeap !you guessed it joe public so that cheap electric is a gonner

Hydrogen may not be feasible now but going to look cheap with electric prices then and EOL costs to those superposed to green batteries...NO EV cars will not be here in 30 years it will be something else we don't have with a combustion engine yet, aircraft cant fly on batteries either, nor can trucks to any super miles they have to cover with Batteries plus pulling power, The combustion is still king even if its not four star/diesel running on them in the future, its something we don yet know what it is, EVS are NOT the answer

Yes you're correct, it isn't a short term phenomenon, the UK government have just invested £400million on new rapid charging points & infrastructure. https://insideevs.com/news/370639/uk...ns-investment/




A lot of docks are gearing up for the onslaught of BEV deliveries with charging stations like this.


https://i.imgur.com/GSbyyxMl.jpg

A few things to address there ...

A huge percentage of the UK's current power use is actually taken up with refining fossil fuels. In the UK alone, oil refineries use 5620 GWh of electricity per annum. That's the consumption required just to get the fuel as far as the pumps. Clearly, a move to EVs would result in a drastic FALL in this particular area of demand on the grid. The net effect is that if every ICE car were to be replaced by an EV, the overall increase in demand on the grid would be something in the order of 8%.

It's a misconception to think that everybody with an EV would arrive home from work every day and plug it in to charge straight away, crashing the grid around 6pm. Obviously there are plenty of outliers, but the average driver in the UK covers just over 7000 miles a year, or about 21 miles per day - with today's mid-range EVs (let alone the longer range ones that are in the pipeline a couple of years from now), this would mean one overnight charge every week to ten days. Not every day.

You reckon the era of cheap electricity is a goner? On the contrary, the cost of offshore wind production is continuing to fall and is now below the overall current market price. Good news for us all, as it will see our electricity bills reduce.

You reckon that trucks aren't capable of running on electricity? Best let Amazon know that, seeing as they've ordered 100000 of them from Rivian. For larger scale HGVs, you may be interested in checking the specs of the Tesla Semi. 500 miles on a single charge, 30 minutes to add a further 400 miles of range, lower running costs than a diesel HGV and better pulling power, especially uphill.

"End" of life for batteries in vehicles is deemed to be when they fall below 70% capacity. So today's Kia e-Soul, for example, will still have a combined range of 160 miles on a single charge by the time it will have "failed". Capacity is very easy to measure and the data thus far indicates that for EVs produced in the past 5-6 years, batteries can be expected to last some 900,000 miles. The rest of the car will be scrap long before the battery.

But this doesn't mean so-called "end of life" EV batteries actually get scrapped along with the rest of the car, it means they become an asset which gets repurposed for commercial and domestic power storage. Don't forget that a 50kWh battery whose capacity has gradually dropped to 35kWh over the years will still be capable of providing all the average UK household's power requirements for three days solid. As this becomes more widespread, it will help greatly with "smoothing out" the peaks & troughs of grid demand. The main reason night rate electricity is cheaper is because there's less demand at night, but it's too costly to ramp production up and down. With the adoption of battery storage, power produced overnight can be stored on-site and used during the day, when demand is at is peak.

In short, EVs ARE the answer! :D

Since a lot of electricity generation is based on combusting carbon fuels, the lower cost of electricity is just a reflection of taxation. Hydrogen is the only neutral combustion available, provided the generation of hydrogen is done with renewable energy like wind, waves sun or water.
Storage is a problem, but there is no reason to assume that could not be solved as indeed the energy density is being improved for electric systems.
As for predictions on what will be binned, and how fast, is only dependent on your imagination, or lack of same, as may be the case.
A similar point of view could well have been holding sway regarding horses, feeding lots, stables, cleaning and watering say 120 years ago.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article65790.html

Continuing AndyMCs train of thought,- some future government may decree that all households have a full solar array. Most people I know who have a 4kw solar array pay very little, if anything for electricity, indeed many of the older installations, when the feed-in tariff was high (it has been completely discontinued for new installations since March this year) regularly paid out more than their owners used. Domestic solar panels could therefore keep a large battery fully charged, ready to transfer to your EV at any time, avoiding peak time shortages.
Of course, as new safety features such as parking assistance and lane guidance and auto braking become the norm, and our older cars without such features are deemed less safe, we may find insurance costs drive us off the road, indeed, if self driving cars become the norm, or even the law, then we may only be allowed to trailer our cars to closed roads and racetracks for a run out, on home-brewed fuel. I'm not sure my CDT would respond too well to cooking oil, (too sophisticated) but my old Mitsubishi diesel is quite happy on the stuff for much of the year, as were some of my old Pugs and Citroens!

We are doomed Captain Mainwaring!

Thanks for bringing the conversation back to the future of classic cars.

It is beginning to look like it is possibly the end of the road for classic cars, well actually driving them anyway.
Museum pieces!

I have been reading this and something that seems to been forgotten is the oil companies, they make millions every day and I am sure they are not going to sit back and and let us all convert to EV with out some sort of fight.

My feeling is ice powered vehicles will still be about for many years unless they find a way of extending the range. Commercial vehicles often do many miles a day with little or no downtime and vehicles like ambulces are used 24 7 so they will have to come up with a solution to that.

I feel if we come back in 50 years it might not be as different as we fear.

The oil companies are already shifting into the charging route LINK as just one example, and recently saw an ad for BP Power - as in household electric.

If you think how electric vehicles have come on in just the past ten years after a concerted effort, I can easily believe the technology will have become commonplace for a 600 mile range for a car, with quick charge batteries. The quick charge batteries will be deemed too dangerous to charge at home so will need to be charged via a charging station (current oil companies). With the supply partially from solar and wind power located within a station (instead of tanks) as well as a supply from a power plant operated by a former oil company. With cables supplying these stations without the need of a fleet of oil tankers to supply the underground tanks.

What will really accelerate this 'revolution' will be banning of initially private ICEs in exclusion zones. With the ban of new ICEs from 2030 (possibly earlier - 2025 in some places), by 2050, it would be realistic that ICEs will be a rare sight on the road. Think how often you see a Triumph car (of any type), a mark 2 Capri, mk3 Cortine on the road? These cars are roughly 45-50 years old now, which our cars would be by 2050. Ignoring rust for the time being (because you can consider non rust affected countries eg spain), a lot of these cars were put off the road because of a lack of parts, as well as leaded fuel. You could consider it a natural selection for cars. People buy them on trend, availability and convenience.

I dont think your term of I feel if we come back in 50 years it might not be as different as we fear. is complete. I feel if we come back in 50 years it might not be as different nor as difficult as we fear. would be more accurate. ;)

I think everyone is being a bit negative. There will always be classic cars - rich folk like them and many politicians - and that group tend to get what they want. I think I may see the end of petrol daily drives in my lifetime, but as a classic I do believe they will live on!

I think all that is needed for electric vehicles to become an everyday proposition is to be able to charge in a few minutes at most.

If I understand the technology correctly, if battery technology moves on so it can take high charge rates, a form of capacitive charging will mean you will get your recharge extremely quickly. These super capacitors or similar, will store charge ready to be released to charge spent batteries at stations, or even at home.

To ease traffic congestion cars of the future will drive themselves, and those driven by the likes of us will just get in the way and slow things down.


So forget about what is powering them, the fact is you won't be at the wheel, and that will rule out classics, future classics, and and anything else that is not fully automated. :getmecoat:

Can't remember where, unfortunately, but I remember reading something a while back discussing the notion of a "bridging technology" between today's EVs and those made in e.g. five years' time involving supercapacitors - the idea being that the first amount of rapid charge/discharge (e.g. heavy acceleration) would be handled by the supercapacitor, while the more conventional Li-Ion battery would handle the steadier/more gradual phase of the cycle.

I'm not sure how realistic or necessary that is, tbh. The current (ahaha) top-of-the-range tech as embodied in the likes of the Porsche Taycan - which can charge seven times faster than today's average EV does, taking just 15 minutes to add another 248 miles of range - will certainly reach us lesser mortals in due course. While 350kW charging in mainstream EVs is still some way off, among the latest crop we are already seeing improvements in rapid charging capability from around 50kW to 100 or even 175kW.

But the Taycan is a car which already has a range of over 300 miles and for myself at least, this would be near on the maximum distance I might ever cover in a single road trip. There is simply no possibility of me doing that sort of journey without taking at least a 10-15 minute break, for safety reasons if none other. Setting my sights a bit lower and looking at the mid-range Volkswagen ID, even cruising above 70mph all the way would still only necessitate a 10 minute stop at a 125kW charger en route to ensure I have more than enough range to complete my journey.

I've said before that if cost wasn't an issue, I would love to convert one of my 75s to EV. A 200 mile range, with the capability of adding another 100 miles in less than half an hour, would be more than adequate for me. Most days I only cover 20 miles, with the occasional 30-mile round trip to the nearest main town, so even a paltry 1st generation Leaf battery would do the basics for me. But I think I'd rather something with a bit ... more. ;) I certainly don't feel the need to have adaptive cruise control, autopilot, self-parking or other such modern gimmicks which come as standard in today's motors, so an all-electric 75 would do me nicely.

The future of classic cars
 

Ed China wrote a very good article on this subject.
He maintained that the only way forward would be
electric conversion. There are already some budding
specialists in this field. Logically, there will be less fossil fuel imported due to declining demand and the price per litre will rise. Realistically, owners of classic vehicles lower down the 'food chain' will no longer be able to afford to fuel them. Those with Ferraris, Maseratis, Rolls-Royces will. It's definitely the end of the thermal engine era.

lets hope you dont have a serious bump in one ( electric car) with fires, not a pretty sight when you can't isolate the live/negatives in a crash.

True that, sort of - it's the electrolyte which is the greatest fire risk in a lithium-ion battery. But then again, neither is a petrol (or LPG, or even hydrogen) fireball an easy thing to deal with. Might be worth having a read through this article, but here are a couple of excerpts -

Here's another article which starts off with a rather pertinent quote:

"A battery-powered vehicle having a fire incident is newsworthy. A gasoline-powered vehicle having a fire is newsworthy only if it stops traffic."

In short, if this is something that genuinely concerns you then you should never get on a aeroplane again, as the fire risk from all those phone and laptop batteries they allow on is greater, less preventable and potentially more catastrophic than any EV fire.

Not wanting to get political on the subject (lets face it, it will be politicians that decide) but the Labour Party Conference seem to have voted overwhelmingly to ban the use of ALL fossil fuels by 2030 if they come into power.

The end may come sooner than we think.