Despite the big electric powertrain push, not all brands are completely doing away with their internal combustion engines.

Global electric vehicle sales are ever increasing and while South Africa does lag behind as far as choice is concerned, there’s no denying that the past few years have been dominated by the electric car revolution.

Many European brands have already confirmed they’ll be ditching petrol and diesel, in favour of electricity, like Fiat. Given the coverage, you’d think the end of the petrol and diesel engine is near, but this is not quite the case.

While electric-powered cars have risen in prominence, one of the legacy carmakers has confirmed it has not abandoned its internal-combustion engine program. This is surprising, considering the fanfare around the new BMW iX and BMW i4.

BMW Development Director Frank Weber told German website Auto Motor und Sport that BMW is currently working on a new generation of petrol and diesel engines that will range from six-cylinder to eight-cylinder. No models were mentioned, but if we go on what’s due for revision in the next few years, you can expect to see these shoe-horned into the bigger vehicles.

“One thing is certain for us: we still need the state-of-the-art combustion engine for a few more years to effectively reduce CO2 emissions in the passenger car sector globally.That’s why we’re working on a new generation of engines: petrol, diesel, six-cylinder, eight-cylinder.They will then also be technologically prepared for the coming emission standards.With the six-cylinder engine alone, we are reducing CO2 emissions more massively than has ever been the case with a generation change.We are helped here by the fact that legislation is beginning to be standardized around the world.In order to reconcile emission requirements on the one hand and performance requirements on the other, we looked at the entire charge cycle and found a promising approach there.” said Weber.

With this news, BMW fanatics can rest a little easier as the demise of the fabled inline 6-cylinder has been pushed back by a few years. BMW will be making use of hybrid technology, particularly in its M cars, with the all-new BMW M5 tipped to use an electrified and turbocharged V8 petrol engine.

Further Reading

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