Quote:
Originally Posted by 230iZTR
I think that's where I'd disagree...or at least provide a thorough addendum. As electric (and autonomous self-driving, rideshared, etc) cars become the norm it will create a niche for enthusiast oriented ICE cars that are unbound by the regs for street legality. That will push ICE cars the same way horses went with the proliferation of cars - free to become specialized for showing, racing, and work. Instead of purchasing an M2 or M4 weighed down by safety features and creature comforts, we can get something more like an m240iR or M4 GT4. They could bring back classics like the e30 M3 Evo as a production car. They could sell you a turnkey Formula BMW car. Keep it in your garage, hail yourself an autonomous Tesla Cybertruck, hitch your trailered racecar to it, and sleep in luxury on your way to the track.
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For the "unbound by regs for street legality", I guess they are track only cars? If so, like the horses, if you will have a small group of rich people that can afford to trailer their cars to the track. Would be interesting to see if track days could afford to go on with only dedicated track cars. Large manufacturers will never go after this market with new products so only way old classics are coming back is you buy one and fix it up. I would like to have a track only car but the costs of the vehicle/truck/trailer/support parts, then the cost of the track day is more than I am willing to spend today or in the future especially as I would use the car a couple of times per year.
I don't see ICE's getting banned or becoming obsolete in my lifetime so I am not worried about it. My weekend manual ICE is now 14 years old, would be easy to have a 25 year old weekend car today so cars built today will be around as long as I am driving.
I have no issue with daily driving a EV. If they were to cut the battery cost in half we would switch one of our cars to an EV today as the biggest issue is the initial sales price and this is because of the battery. EV to ICE, if initial sales price for equal specs EV has a lot of benefits, especially as 1 in a 2 car daily driver household. Recharge the EV at less than 1/2 the price of the ICE, far less maintenance and repair, refill overnight (nothing I enjoy about the gas station).