Future of internal combustion (gasoline) engines

[Micra In The Mountains]

Hi everyone, I would like to get a very casual and lively (but hopefully not too terribly heated!) discussion on where you think pure petrol / diesel engines will be heading in the next few years. With Tesla's Model 3 going on sale July 7 (I think?), Volvo's announcement of producing only hybrids & EVs by 2019 and some countries considering banning petrol vehicles, I'd like to get your take on how these events may affect some of your future decisions on getting around, vacation / long road trips, lifestyle changes, vehicle purchases, etc. or not. Here are some articles just to get started:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/volv...2019-1.4190649

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...vehicles-2040/

http://driving.ca/auto-news/news/mot...s-no-easy-task

For now, let's stick mainly to gasoline engines and we'll try to keep autonomous vehicles and the impending AI singularity out of this discussion...

As for my wife and I, we're not environmentalists by any stretch, but we do believe in treading lightly and being as self-sufficient & sustainable as possible. We plan on taking good care of and driving the Little Guy for at least the next 10+ years (the Suzuki station wagon our Micra replaced last about 14 years before the 5 speed manual transmission went), and Little Guy may be our last purely gasoline powered vehicle. His replacement will likely be some kind of hybrid AWD vehicle with some off-road capability and moderate towing capacity.

We're not committed on getting a pure EV at this time due to the current lack of supporting cross-country infrastructure (i.e. a charging station at every street corner), initial purchase costs (w/o government subsidies) and "range anxiety" thru the roof. We would consider a plug-in hybrid like the Volt, where the gas engine is used to charge the lithium battery pack only & has no mechanical connection to the drive wheels. For us to go full electric, it would need to be at least as cost-effective as the Little Guy (less than $20,000 to purchase, can go an average of 500km or longer per charge, hopefully charges to full capacity quicker than overnight, and has similar insurance costs & cost of ownership).

I'm not sure if it would be possible to completely charge a lithium battery pack that large in the same time it would take to gas up the 40 litre tank in Little Guy, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that there will be some solution to this in the near future, such as wireless charging embedded in the highway...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...tric-vehicles/

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/q...-we-build-evs/

Hopefully in 10-15 years the tech and infrastructure would improve to the point where we wouldn't notice much of a difference between the EV and living with the Little Guy. I'm also hoping by then we'll still be allowed to own private cars:

http://www.businessinsider.com/citie...sive-2 http://

And not be like the guy in that Luxus IS commercial (I'm sorry but I just had to throw this one in there!):

https://lexusenthusiast.com/2017/01/...is-commercial/

Now how's this for an off-road rally EV:


https://www.zap-map.com/plug-in-adve...a-nissan-leaf/

Let the discussion commence!