13 ms·

Dodge Is Cancelling the Hemi V8

17 points by SQL2219 5y ago

aurizon 5y ago
We are going to see a culling of the herd over the next 20 years. Electric will expand, gas and gas taxes will increase dramatically as the CO2 reduction's urgency emerges. Smaller engines might do better - huge gas hogs might not last as prices increase and demand decreases. Many will buy used cars and car lives will increase as more repair what they have.
- yostrovs 5y ago
  Strangely, though, the opposite has been the trend for the last decade.
  - echelon 5y ago
    There will be a tipping point. I just don't think we'll see it until they start ripping up gas stations.
    - kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
      The first time a gas station is replaced by a row of electric chargers, half of our country is going to lose their farking minds.
      - AuthorizedCust 5y ago
        I think you’ll far more often see gas stations replaced by other uses. It’s too easy to install residential chargers.
        aurizon 5y ago
        Yes, I agree, it all depends on the power rate. A savvy owner will install a home power bank that can be charges at the best rate, and have a faster charge capability. I expect many stations will be converted to the highest best use for the property. Chargers do not need prime strip locations because the cars will come to them, so they can spot them in here and there as the power distribution grid warrants. Of course, power sellers greed will want to grab some of this, so I anticipate regulators will also have a role.
      - mgbmtl 5y ago
        Where I live (Montreal), a few gaz stations have been replaced by condos. There are still way too many stations, and they always seem empty, but presumably still lucrative. Outside the cities, increasingly gaz stations also have charging stations. It only takes a bit of space, and it's subsidized. 10% of new vehicle sales are EVs (in the province), and it has doubled for the past 5 years. We're getting there :)
        aurizon 5y ago
        Yes Quebec has very cheap electricity until about the middle 2030's when the cheap power gets turned off.
        echelon 5y ago
        > when the cheap power gets turned off What does this mean? Nuclear decommissions? Fossil fuel shuttering? ...?
        aurizon 5y ago
        When the cheap deal on Churchill falls expires. When renewed, as per the agreement, the price will be adjusted and Newfoundland and Labrador will get more $$, and they will be able to export power via UHV cable to the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_Falls_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_Falls_Generating_Sta...
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    The Democratic Party has promised to strangle US energy availability, so prices will continue to go up. (Their strategy to fight climate change is by forcing energy companies out of business and closing pipelines.)
  - aurizon 5y ago
    I think there is an overlaying of various trends. The first successful ecars - the Teslas - have shown the way. The first ecars were made to fail so that the car makers could cite the lack of demand. We will not see Detroit and others making serious contenders (once their fires from being too cheap are done)
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  I don’t necessarily agree, since this depends so much on the political agenda and peoples willingness to accept a lower standard of living. The energy density of fossil fuels is remarkably more energy dense than the best battery tech we can come up with, and I don’t see any scenario where the grid supports the average person filling up the equivalent of ~20 gallons of gas or ~600kwh of energy in under 5 minutes without superconductors and some other Star Trek league tech. Now expand that to trucks and aircraft that fill up hundreds or thousands of gallons of gas in a matter of minutes; it’s just a complete fantasy that EVs will meet our transportation needs at this point.
  - sovnade 5y ago
    The average commute is 25 miles round-trip. Less than 2% drive > 100 miles a day, and far less than 1% drive 150+ miles. Most EVs have a 300+ mile range with several pushing 350. It would work as a commuting car for 99% of the population without needing to charge except at home overnight, and the average person (25 mile round trip) can go over a week between charges. Saying EVs can't replace gasoline-powered cars is nonsense. Trucks - same thing. The Tesla Semi is said to have a 500 mile range on one charge fully loaded with 80k lbs, and it's the first iteration. Aircraft - no, li-ion is too heavy. We know it won't work for planes. But replacing gas-powered cars and trucks would make a big impact.
    - mulmen 5y ago
      I'm curious if we can synthesize hydrocarbon fuels to meet air travel demands. It seems like a difficult (and expensive) process to scale but if we don't have the surface fleet to worry about is it feasible?
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    For this to matter, you'd have to drive your car more than its capacity per day. Otherwise you just plug it in overnight which is far easier than even filling it up at a gas station once a week.
adolph 5y ago
The current-production "HEMI" engine heads are flatter and more complex than the 1950s–'70s Hemi V8 chamber. The combustion chambers are no longer truly hemispherical. It uses a coil-on-plug distributor-less ignition system and two spark plugs per cylinder to shorten flame travel leading to more consistent combustion and reduced emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Hemi_engine#Third_generation:_2003-present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Hemi_engine#Third_gen... As the engineering involved in new engines has improved and evolved, the true hemispherical chamber has morphed and twisted into more sophisticated and complex designs that are meant to extract more power, with lower emissions, from any given combustion event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherical_combustion_chamber#Design_evolution_in_modern_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherical_combustion_chamb...
elipsey 5y ago
Why do boomers think turbochargers are some kind of conspiracy? When I was younger my dad's friends thought my Mitsubishi Eclipse was spearheading an invasion of crypto-imperial Japan, and now the "New World Order" is trying to take away their gigantic, heavy ass cast-iron engines? A turbo six Charger would still be fast enough to kill you and several bystanders. If it's superior handling and gas mileage upset you, you could always weld a couple of boat anchors to the front bumper. :)
- flatiron 5y ago
  In my experience they break a lot. Like a lot a lot.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    It depends. The Mitsubishi 4G63T mentioned by the parent was pretty solid. Even most of the aftermarket turbos sold for it were reliable too. I've had good experiences with Volvo turbos too.
    - wcunning 5y ago
      A lot of it is how the cooling and lubrication is set up. Many turbos use engine oil lubrication and cool the bearings the same way, which can easily degrade oil additive quality prematurely, since that bearing is heated by 1000*F exhaust gases and running around 200k RPMs. Change your oil early (~5k miles, earlier than most manufacturer recommendations) and use full synthetic and they should last. Oh, and don’t run right up to the redline constantly…
    - post_from_work 5y ago
      Yeah, certain turbo powerplants are AMAZINGLY durable. The 4G63T, 1JZ-GTE, and 2JZ-GTE are all standouts: stout, overbuilt, iron-block Japanese engines. For lighter aluminum-block turbo engines, I'm a fan of the 4B11T (in my daily driver, an Evo X) and the BMW B58 (with continued development, I think it will become the greatest inline-6 of our time, this generation's 2JZ).
- 5y ago
wcunning 5y ago
I work for a competing car company and I once saw a presentation showing that turbos significantly increased CO2 emissions because the cooling of the exhaust air causes the catalytic converter to operate a few hundred degrees Fahrenheit cooler, lowering reaction efficiency. This can be mitigated by hybrid setups, since you can avoid pumping cold air down the exhaust path on decelerations, but without that, it’s actually not clear that the emissions efficiency of smaller, turbo motors is necessarily better at similar power outputs to larger naturally aspirated engines.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  You must mean something other than CO2? Catalytic converters aren't intended to reduce CO2.
  - wcunning 5y ago
    Might have been more NOx, but the presentation also referred to COx. I’m not an emissions specialist, so I might have misinterpreted parts of it. Or it could have been related to combustion efficiency in addition to reaction efficiency.
    - cirrus3 5y ago
      > I’m not an emissions specialist, so I might have misinterpreted parts of it. Maybe just delete your comment then, it is distracting
  - ardit33 5y ago
    This is specific to small Turbo engines (eg. 1.1 l three cylinder turbo). They get great MPG ratings in official testing, but in real world usage they perform worse than a larger non-turbo counterpart (for the same amount of power/HP). Small turbos get good mpg ratings, but their real world use is different: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1109366_small-turbo-engines-get-good-mpg-ratings-real-world-use-may-be-a-different-story https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1109366_small-turbo-eng... The trouble with turbos: Why fuel economy can be worse, not better https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/adventure/red-line/the-trouble-with-turbos-why-fuel-economy-can-be-worse-not-better/article29705614/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/adventure/red-li... Could we be reaching the end of the road for small-capacity turbocharged engines? https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/02/could-we-be-reaching-the-end-of-the-road-for-small-capacity-turbocharged-engines/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/02/could-we-be-reaching-th...
jdhn 5y ago
I'm admittedly not a fan of Stellantis, but knowing Dodge they'll give the Hemi one hell of a sendoff. They already have the crate Hellephant, wonder if they'll try to cram an emissions legal version of that in a Charger/Challenger/Durango? Edit: Downvoters, explain yourself.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  If they're halting production of the V8 and replacing it with a V6, then presumably that means V8 crate engines won't be manufactured either.
  - jdhn 5y ago
    Ford still makes crate engines based on the 302 & 351, and Chevy still makes small & big block engines despite the fact that these architectures aren't in any production vehicle (the LS series of engines are based on Chevy's small block, but there's so many changes it may as well be a new architecture). I don't see why Stellantis wouldn't keep producing a small line of V8 engines for enthusiasts.
- whycombagator 5y ago
  No idea why the downvotes. Dodge is great at running with an old design and milking the hell out of it. Currently we are on the “jailbreak” challenger/charger which everyone is excited about ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Rumours that another challenger (like the demon) will carry the hellephant. However, covid and production issues may have quashed that. Also, thus far dodge has been clever to ensure no production car has exceeded the 808hp of the demon (red eye and jailbreak are just shy), so the rumours may just be that
post_from_work 5y ago
I'm kinda-ok with powerplant consolidation. Do we really need 4-5 different big-displacement V8s? The GM OHV Small Block family is already the go-to answer for the aftermarket; it should be the same for OEMs. Maybe that requires a change in how car companies view IP, licensing, and the value they add as product integrators.
jmrm 5y ago
Totally understandable. It's pretty sad to me, but people nowadays doesn't want sport cars, they want SUVs, and companies will orient what they sell to those products that can sell easily. Also, we have to remember that Dodge, Ram Trucks, Jeep, Chrysler, and Fiat, as part of Stellantis, are going to share parts with the other brands, and that means not only to lose some parts designs that sell less, but also could make some brands to disappear, and if they don't do that is due to heritage. At least in the US, what some years ago was the FCA group had and have more coherence than their actual European team makes, and sell different types of cars in their different brands.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Hemi was always a marketing term anyway. My 1970 Honda also has hemispherical heads. So did a lot of 1980s Toyotas as far as I understand. Chrysler isn't getting rid of sports cars or high output motors, they are just sunsetting a legacy sub-brand. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a result of declining sales anyway.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jonstewart 5y ago
Good riddance! I live in DC and the streets are riddled with bad drivers. Invariably the worst are driving Chargers, high on their own gas fumes. I used to own an ‘84 LTD with a 5L V8. Its horsepower was more modest than today’s hyper optimized engines, but it could still peel out of any parking lot and cruise down the interstate, a lot of fun to drive. But it’s a car of the past, and now these terrible Dodge Hemi-roid-rage cars will be, too.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  The fact that you don't notice the guys in BMWs and whatnot who do the exact same thing tells me you probably just don't like the FCA (I'm sorry, Stellantis) demographics. Frankly I think that it's a good thing that there exist value brands that can give people with room temperature credit scores the ability to own flashy sports cars, big sedans and 3-row family haulers.
  - jonstewart 5y ago
    :eyeroll: There are BMW drivers here, bad ones even, but a lot of them are old and don’t drive so fast.
- wyager 5y ago
  East coast drivers are all terrible, but the worst by far drive shitty commuter cars.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    I’m convinced every metropolitan area will have its share of bad drivers, and the only outlier is country-esque small towns where people are never in a hurry to get anywhere and often drive 10-5 under the limit.
    - wyager 5y ago
      Nah I've lived all over the US (>1yr in CA, TX, NY, CT, MT, ID) and in several major metro areas (>1yr SF, SATX, ATX, NY) and east coast drivers are 1000% the absolute worst. Most small town drivers also seem be better even in similarly adverse driving conditions (construction traffic, high speed, etc.) which I'm not really sure how to explain. Maybe more absolute miles is helpful? But beyond that, even in metro areas, east coasters are especially terrible.
dlevine 5y ago
"All this is ostensibly to combat the slowly, and ever-slightly increasing global temperature." Am I missing something, or does the writer of this article live in an alternate reality where global warming is only a minor problem?
- wyager 5y ago
  "Minor" is a fairly reasonable description IMO; best predictions suggest single digit productivity loss a hundred years from now, compared to a number of existential risks like nuclear proliferation, advanced biowarfare, normal warfare, etc. Of course it's all relative.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - undoware 5y ago
    This post will not age well. Neither will its author. Aging requires food.
    - hagbard_c 5y ago
      Food comes from plants, which require CO₂ to grow. An increase of atmospheric CO₂ leads to an increase in plant growth, proof of which can be easily had by checking historical records which show a direct relation between the CO₂ concentration and the amount of biomass. It is possible that the growth zones will move and that areas which are currently too cold for food production become viable for agriculture - Russia and Canada stand to gain here. So yes, ageing requires food which should be plentiful. There have been earlier warm periods which saw e.g. the flourishing of the Roman empire. This was followed by a cooler period (during which the Roman empire saw its demise), followed by another warmer period in which the Vikings sailed the known world and colonised Greenland. Grapes for wine were grown in the south of Sweden in those days, these eventally disappeared and the Greenland colonies had to be abandoned when the climate turned colder. Now grapes are grown again in the south of Sweden even though it took the cultivation of a more hardy species (among these a frost-resistent Frankenthaler, I tried to grow it in the west of Sweden but it turned out not to be frost-resistant enough, alas...) to make this possible. If you don't agree with what I wrote here I'd like to see a rebuttal. Why will there be less food on a greener planet?
King-Aaron 5y ago
> Please, try to hide your excitement about a turbo-six instead of a bruiser Hemi V8 A lot of turbo 6's would absolutely hose a v8 - Ford in Australia learned this when they released the XR6 Turbo with a 4.0L inline 6 turbo, and out-sold and out-performed their flagship 8cyl offerings. This author sounds like a typical old man yelling at the clouds.
- whycombagator 5y ago
  Sure, but you position the outcome (out perform/sell) as if the manufacturer didn’t intend it
Thoreandan 5y ago
> All this is ostensibly to combat the slowly, and ever-slightly increasing global temperature. The hubris of believing by curtailing carbon emissions we can just “turn the dial” on the global thermostat down a few degrees is shocking but sadly not surprising. After all, the tale of Icarus exists for a reason. A harbinger of our brave new world order has been revealed yet again ...annnnd I'm out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ > Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
markvdb 5y ago
6.4l engines, 13 mpg. Three good reasons why one rarely sees these in my native Flanders region of Belgium: - one-time vehicle registration tax: 11.4k€ or about 13k USD - yearly road tax: 6.5k€ or 7.3k USD - fuel cost: +- 52 USD/100 miles The undersigned silly idiot drives his 15 year old station wagon as little as possible and like an old grandmother, consuming 53mpg. The goal: to avoid unncessarily sponsoring Mohammed Bin Salman, Vladimir Putin and similar nuisances, like global warming. He would prefer something resembling solidarity in his quest, by moving cars with engines like this to extreme specialty real use, musea or engine geek clubs outside the public road system.
Overtonwindow 5y ago
Perhaps I’m getting old but… I’ll admit the passing of the V-8 engine. I’d really love to have an alAccord, or a Camry as a V-8

17 points by SQL2219 5y ago

We are going to see a culling of the herd over the next 20 years. Electric will expand, gas and gas taxes will increase dramatically as the CO2 reduction's urgency emerges. Smaller engines might do better - huge gas hogs might not last as prices increase and demand decreases. Many will buy used cars and car lives will increase as more repair what they have.

yostrovs 5y ago
Strangely, though, the opposite has been the trend for the last decade.
- echelon 5y ago
  There will be a tipping point. I just don't think we'll see it until they start ripping up gas stations.
  - kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
    The first time a gas station is replaced by a row of electric chargers, half of our country is going to lose their farking minds.
    - AuthorizedCust 5y ago
      I think you’ll far more often see gas stations replaced by other uses. It’s too easy to install residential chargers.
      - aurizon 5y ago
        Yes, I agree, it all depends on the power rate. A savvy owner will install a home power bank that can be charges at the best rate, and have a faster charge capability. I expect many stations will be converted to the highest best use for the property. Chargers do not need prime strip locations because the cars will come to them, so they can spot them in here and there as the power distribution grid warrants. Of course, power sellers greed will want to grab some of this, so I anticipate regulators will also have a role.
    - mgbmtl 5y ago
      Where I live (Montreal), a few gaz stations have been replaced by condos. There are still way too many stations, and they always seem empty, but presumably still lucrative. Outside the cities, increasingly gaz stations also have charging stations. It only takes a bit of space, and it's subsidized. 10% of new vehicle sales are EVs (in the province), and it has doubled for the past 5 years. We're getting there :)
      - aurizon 5y ago
        Yes Quebec has very cheap electricity until about the middle 2030's when the cheap power gets turned off.
        echelon 5y ago
        > when the cheap power gets turned off What does this mean? Nuclear decommissions? Fossil fuel shuttering? ...?
        aurizon 5y ago
        When the cheap deal on Churchill falls expires. When renewed, as per the agreement, the price will be adjusted and Newfoundland and Labrador will get more $$, and they will be able to export power via UHV cable to the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_Falls_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_Falls_Generating_Sta...
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  The Democratic Party has promised to strangle US energy availability, so prices will continue to go up. (Their strategy to fight climate change is by forcing energy companies out of business and closing pipelines.)
- aurizon 5y ago
  I think there is an overlaying of various trends. The first successful ecars - the Teslas - have shown the way. The first ecars were made to fail so that the car makers could cite the lack of demand. We will not see Detroit and others making serious contenders (once their fires from being too cheap are done)
oceanplexian 5y ago
I don’t necessarily agree, since this depends so much on the political agenda and peoples willingness to accept a lower standard of living. The energy density of fossil fuels is remarkably more energy dense than the best battery tech we can come up with, and I don’t see any scenario where the grid supports the average person filling up the equivalent of ~20 gallons of gas or ~600kwh of energy in under 5 minutes without superconductors and some other Star Trek league tech. Now expand that to trucks and aircraft that fill up hundreds or thousands of gallons of gas in a matter of minutes; it’s just a complete fantasy that EVs will meet our transportation needs at this point.
- sovnade 5y ago
  The average commute is 25 miles round-trip. Less than 2% drive > 100 miles a day, and far less than 1% drive 150+ miles. Most EVs have a 300+ mile range with several pushing 350. It would work as a commuting car for 99% of the population without needing to charge except at home overnight, and the average person (25 mile round trip) can go over a week between charges. Saying EVs can't replace gasoline-powered cars is nonsense. Trucks - same thing. The Tesla Semi is said to have a 500 mile range on one charge fully loaded with 80k lbs, and it's the first iteration. Aircraft - no, li-ion is too heavy. We know it won't work for planes. But replacing gas-powered cars and trucks would make a big impact.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    I'm curious if we can synthesize hydrocarbon fuels to meet air travel demands. It seems like a difficult (and expensive) process to scale but if we don't have the surface fleet to worry about is it feasible?
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  For this to matter, you'd have to drive your car more than its capacity per day. Otherwise you just plug it in overnight which is far easier than even filling it up at a gas station once a week.

adolph 5y ago

The current-production "HEMI" engine heads are flatter and more complex than the 1950s–'70s Hemi V8 chamber. The combustion chambers are no longer truly hemispherical. It uses a coil-on-plug distributor-less ignition system and two spark plugs per cylinder to shorten flame travel leading to more consistent combustion and reduced emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Hemi_engine#Third_generation:_2003-present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Hemi_engine#Third_gen... As the engineering involved in new engines has improved and evolved, the true hemispherical chamber has morphed and twisted into more sophisticated and complex designs that are meant to extract more power, with lower emissions, from any given combustion event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherical_combustion_chamber#Design_evolution_in_modern_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherical_combustion_chamb...

elipsey 5y ago

Why do boomers think turbochargers are some kind of conspiracy? When I was younger my dad's friends thought my Mitsubishi Eclipse was spearheading an invasion of crypto-imperial Japan, and now the "New World Order" is trying to take away their gigantic, heavy ass cast-iron engines? A turbo six Charger would still be fast enough to kill you and several bystanders. If it's superior handling and gas mileage upset you, you could always weld a couple of boat anchors to the front bumper. :)

flatiron 5y ago
In my experience they break a lot. Like a lot a lot.
- tyingq 5y ago
  It depends. The Mitsubishi 4G63T mentioned by the parent was pretty solid. Even most of the aftermarket turbos sold for it were reliable too. I've had good experiences with Volvo turbos too.
  - wcunning 5y ago
    A lot of it is how the cooling and lubrication is set up. Many turbos use engine oil lubrication and cool the bearings the same way, which can easily degrade oil additive quality prematurely, since that bearing is heated by 1000*F exhaust gases and running around 200k RPMs. Change your oil early (~5k miles, earlier than most manufacturer recommendations) and use full synthetic and they should last. Oh, and don’t run right up to the redline constantly…
  - post_from_work 5y ago
    Yeah, certain turbo powerplants are AMAZINGLY durable. The 4G63T, 1JZ-GTE, and 2JZ-GTE are all standouts: stout, overbuilt, iron-block Japanese engines. For lighter aluminum-block turbo engines, I'm a fan of the 4B11T (in my daily driver, an Evo X) and the BMW B58 (with continued development, I think it will become the greatest inline-6 of our time, this generation's 2JZ).
5y ago

wcunning 5y ago

I work for a competing car company and I once saw a presentation showing that turbos significantly increased CO2 emissions because the cooling of the exhaust air causes the catalytic converter to operate a few hundred degrees Fahrenheit cooler, lowering reaction efficiency. This can be mitigated by hybrid setups, since you can avoid pumping cold air down the exhaust path on decelerations, but without that, it’s actually not clear that the emissions efficiency of smaller, turbo motors is necessarily better at similar power outputs to larger naturally aspirated engines.

stickfigure 5y ago
You must mean something other than CO2? Catalytic converters aren't intended to reduce CO2.
- wcunning 5y ago
  Might have been more NOx, but the presentation also referred to COx. I’m not an emissions specialist, so I might have misinterpreted parts of it. Or it could have been related to combustion efficiency in addition to reaction efficiency.
  - cirrus3 5y ago
    > I’m not an emissions specialist, so I might have misinterpreted parts of it. Maybe just delete your comment then, it is distracting
- ardit33 5y ago
  This is specific to small Turbo engines (eg. 1.1 l three cylinder turbo). They get great MPG ratings in official testing, but in real world usage they perform worse than a larger non-turbo counterpart (for the same amount of power/HP). Small turbos get good mpg ratings, but their real world use is different: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1109366_small-turbo-engines-get-good-mpg-ratings-real-world-use-may-be-a-different-story https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1109366_small-turbo-eng... The trouble with turbos: Why fuel economy can be worse, not better https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/adventure/red-line/the-trouble-with-turbos-why-fuel-economy-can-be-worse-not-better/article29705614/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/adventure/red-li... Could we be reaching the end of the road for small-capacity turbocharged engines? https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/02/could-we-be-reaching-the-end-of-the-road-for-small-capacity-turbocharged-engines/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/02/could-we-be-reaching-th...

jdhn 5y ago

I'm admittedly not a fan of Stellantis, but knowing Dodge they'll give the Hemi one hell of a sendoff. They already have the crate Hellephant, wonder if they'll try to cram an emissions legal version of that in a Charger/Challenger/Durango? Edit: Downvoters, explain yourself.

sbierwagen 5y ago
If they're halting production of the V8 and replacing it with a V6, then presumably that means V8 crate engines won't be manufactured either.
- jdhn 5y ago
  Ford still makes crate engines based on the 302 & 351, and Chevy still makes small & big block engines despite the fact that these architectures aren't in any production vehicle (the LS series of engines are based on Chevy's small block, but there's so many changes it may as well be a new architecture). I don't see why Stellantis wouldn't keep producing a small line of V8 engines for enthusiasts.
whycombagator 5y ago
No idea why the downvotes. Dodge is great at running with an old design and milking the hell out of it. Currently we are on the “jailbreak” challenger/charger which everyone is excited about ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Rumours that another challenger (like the demon) will carry the hellephant. However, covid and production issues may have quashed that. Also, thus far dodge has been clever to ensure no production car has exceeded the 808hp of the demon (red eye and jailbreak are just shy), so the rumours may just be that

post_from_work 5y ago

I'm kinda-ok with powerplant consolidation. Do we really need 4-5 different big-displacement V8s? The GM OHV Small Block family is already the go-to answer for the aftermarket; it should be the same for OEMs. Maybe that requires a change in how car companies view IP, licensing, and the value they add as product integrators.

jmrm 5y ago

Totally understandable. It's pretty sad to me, but people nowadays doesn't want sport cars, they want SUVs, and companies will orient what they sell to those products that can sell easily. Also, we have to remember that Dodge, Ram Trucks, Jeep, Chrysler, and Fiat, as part of Stellantis, are going to share parts with the other brands, and that means not only to lose some parts designs that sell less, but also could make some brands to disappear, and if they don't do that is due to heritage. At least in the US, what some years ago was the FCA group had and have more coherence than their actual European team makes, and sell different types of cars in their different brands.

mulmen 5y ago
Hemi was always a marketing term anyway. My 1970 Honda also has hemispherical heads. So did a lot of 1980s Toyotas as far as I understand. Chrysler isn't getting rid of sports cars or high output motors, they are just sunsetting a legacy sub-brand. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a result of declining sales anyway.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jonstewart 5y ago

Good riddance! I live in DC and the streets are riddled with bad drivers. Invariably the worst are driving Chargers, high on their own gas fumes. I used to own an ‘84 LTD with a 5L V8. Its horsepower was more modest than today’s hyper optimized engines, but it could still peel out of any parking lot and cruise down the interstate, a lot of fun to drive. But it’s a car of the past, and now these terrible Dodge Hemi-roid-rage cars will be, too.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
The fact that you don't notice the guys in BMWs and whatnot who do the exact same thing tells me you probably just don't like the FCA (I'm sorry, Stellantis) demographics. Frankly I think that it's a good thing that there exist value brands that can give people with room temperature credit scores the ability to own flashy sports cars, big sedans and 3-row family haulers.
- jonstewart 5y ago
  :eyeroll: There are BMW drivers here, bad ones even, but a lot of them are old and don’t drive so fast.
wyager 5y ago
East coast drivers are all terrible, but the worst by far drive shitty commuter cars.
- judge2020 5y ago
  I’m convinced every metropolitan area will have its share of bad drivers, and the only outlier is country-esque small towns where people are never in a hurry to get anywhere and often drive 10-5 under the limit.
  - wyager 5y ago
    Nah I've lived all over the US (>1yr in CA, TX, NY, CT, MT, ID) and in several major metro areas (>1yr SF, SATX, ATX, NY) and east coast drivers are 1000% the absolute worst. Most small town drivers also seem be better even in similarly adverse driving conditions (construction traffic, high speed, etc.) which I'm not really sure how to explain. Maybe more absolute miles is helpful? But beyond that, even in metro areas, east coasters are especially terrible.

dlevine 5y ago

"All this is ostensibly to combat the slowly, and ever-slightly increasing global temperature." Am I missing something, or does the writer of this article live in an alternate reality where global warming is only a minor problem?

wyager 5y ago
"Minor" is a fairly reasonable description IMO; best predictions suggest single digit productivity loss a hundred years from now, compared to a number of existential risks like nuclear proliferation, advanced biowarfare, normal warfare, etc. Of course it's all relative.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- undoware 5y ago
  This post will not age well. Neither will its author. Aging requires food.
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    Food comes from plants, which require CO₂ to grow. An increase of atmospheric CO₂ leads to an increase in plant growth, proof of which can be easily had by checking historical records which show a direct relation between the CO₂ concentration and the amount of biomass. It is possible that the growth zones will move and that areas which are currently too cold for food production become viable for agriculture - Russia and Canada stand to gain here. So yes, ageing requires food which should be plentiful. There have been earlier warm periods which saw e.g. the flourishing of the Roman empire. This was followed by a cooler period (during which the Roman empire saw its demise), followed by another warmer period in which the Vikings sailed the known world and colonised Greenland. Grapes for wine were grown in the south of Sweden in those days, these eventally disappeared and the Greenland colonies had to be abandoned when the climate turned colder. Now grapes are grown again in the south of Sweden even though it took the cultivation of a more hardy species (among these a frost-resistent Frankenthaler, I tried to grow it in the west of Sweden but it turned out not to be frost-resistant enough, alas...) to make this possible. If you don't agree with what I wrote here I'd like to see a rebuttal. Why will there be less food on a greener planet?

King-Aaron 5y ago

> Please, try to hide your excitement about a turbo-six instead of a bruiser Hemi V8 A lot of turbo 6's would absolutely hose a v8 - Ford in Australia learned this when they released the XR6 Turbo with a 4.0L inline 6 turbo, and out-sold and out-performed their flagship 8cyl offerings. This author sounds like a typical old man yelling at the clouds.

whycombagator 5y ago
Sure, but you position the outcome (out perform/sell) as if the manufacturer didn’t intend it

Thoreandan 5y ago

> All this is ostensibly to combat the slowly, and ever-slightly increasing global temperature. The hubris of believing by curtailing carbon emissions we can just “turn the dial” on the global thermostat down a few degrees is shocking but sadly not surprising. After all, the tale of Icarus exists for a reason. A harbinger of our brave new world order has been revealed yet again ...annnnd I'm out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ > Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

markvdb 5y ago

6.4l engines, 13 mpg. Three good reasons why one rarely sees these in my native Flanders region of Belgium: - one-time vehicle registration tax: 11.4k€ or about 13k USD - yearly road tax: 6.5k€ or 7.3k USD - fuel cost: +- 52 USD/100 miles The undersigned silly idiot drives his 15 year old station wagon as little as possible and like an old grandmother, consuming 53mpg. The goal: to avoid unncessarily sponsoring Mohammed Bin Salman, Vladimir Putin and similar nuisances, like global warming. He would prefer something resembling solidarity in his quest, by moving cars with engines like this to extreme specialty real use, musea or engine geek clubs outside the public road system.

Overtonwindow 5y ago

Perhaps I’m getting old but… I’ll admit the passing of the V-8 engine. I’d really love to have an alAccord, or a Camry as a V-8