Are we the steam engine enthusiasts of the future? - Automotive News

One day, those who fetishise the inner combustion engine can be perceived the same manner as steam engine fans are nowadays.

At least, that’s what somebody on the internet told me the other week in fewer than 141 characters. I think he meant it as an insult.

Which, I concept, was a piece dismissive of folks that appreciate a system that, over the last 120 years, has liberated the sector, brought freedom to billions of human beings and comfort to the needy, constructed communities, shortened wars (different perspectives on its role in them are to be had) and made intercontinental travel possible.

But internet matey was right. The path is set. Even McLaren, maker of specialist high-performance cars, knows the internal combustion (IC) game is over. Sure, beyond our highly developed world of high-tech, high-density living, I’ll be staggered if the IC engine doesn’t have another century of life in it but, still, its time will come.

When solid-state batteries become ‘a thing’ – and Dyson reckons they will by the time it introduces a car in 2020 – the IC engine’s number, which is already up, will look even shorter. “Please tell me this doesn’t run on gas,” they’ll one day say, like Dr Calvin in I, Robot did upon encountering an MV Agusta motorbike. “Gas explodes, you know?” Yes. We know. Goody.

And so, in the end, these machines becomes the keep of the likes of... Who? Us? Bearded, jauntily hatted antique men (plus some women; however generally not), messing around in sheds, retaining matters going, maintaining abilities alive, getting grubby palms, within the call of records.

Only, eventually, it won’t be that grubby a job, will it? It sometimes already isn’t, because of cars like the McLaren P1 – cars with IC engines but also a plethora of electrical and electronic systems. We’ll need more than just boxes of imperial tools to keep cars going. There’ll be electronically actuated dual-clutch gearboxes, active rear steering, e-diffs, hybrid systems, moving aerodynamic addenda and more, all to worry about.

One day, motors with all of those may be conventional automobiles and that they?Ll need searching after. They?Ll want professionals who aren?T au fait with balancing a quartet of carburettors however can glance through lines of code on an obscure pc programme and diagnose that your camshaft sensor is kaput. Instead of somebody who can beat aluminium panels, you?Ll need a expert who can cook dinner up a brand new carbonfibre splitter or 3-d-print a bit of a grab actuator.

And so on it’ll go, I suppose, until one day, today’s next bit of technology is outdated, too. Apparently, there are specialists, even now, who retain banks of old computers so that they can parachute (not literally, presumably) into a thoroughly modern company and sort out whatever obscure finance or database system, for which they retain the correct software or operating system, goes awry. There was a lovely Post-it note on top of a laptop next to an old Formula 1 car at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed that read “Please set computer’s date to 1997".

Then, decades after that, they’ll laugh. Oh, bless, you quaint solid-state battery fans. Can anybody teleport me a fusion sensor for a 2097 Nissan Sunny? And on it’ll go, I suppose. I’m not taking it as an insult.

Related testimonies:

McLaren P1 evaluation

Dyson vehicles to attain manufacturing via 2020

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