I totally agree with you that hybrids are only a stop gap to full electrification. I must disagree with you that racing is only a marketing exercise. That's not at all always the case and it certainly isn't always the case at MB. Racing is too expensive to just be a marketing exercise.

W206 (non-AMG) officially revealed. I don't mind the exterior (the front might be a little long nosed), but I don't love the all touchscreen interior. I definitely bought my W204 for the visceral V8 experience, so not sure how I feel about the 4-pot. I'm sure the hybridisation will be fun with the torque, but it'll definitely be a different feeling. They're really going to have to nail the driving dynamics to make up for it for a lot of customers vs just going out and buying a fully electric car, imo.

I made the "my engineer farther" in this thread a drinking game.

Yes!! Drunk yet?

yes buzzed

It's pretty shameful that there are people in this thread who aren't engineers who think they know more than the engineers when the truth is, that will never be possible because they'll never have the years of schooling and decades of engineering work experience that the engineers have. Your offensive nastiness has been duly noted.

I never said I knew more then an engineer. I didn't make any comments at all about anything except you telling everyone 40 times that your dad is a engineer. Do you have to mention that in every response? I found it silly, so I thought it would be a fun drinking game while reading this thread. I'm sorry that you got offended. I'm not trying to be nasty.... so I'm sorry

If Formula E were the future, people would watch it, but they aren't. I'm not. I find it terribly boring. Like many, I find EV's boring. At some point, I'll have one, but I won't be passionate about it, anymore than I'm passionate about a vacuum or a refrigerator. MB joined Formula E because politicians are forcing change on the auto industry and the only way for automakers to stay in business is to sell EV's to meet the arbitrary emissions standards. MB wanted their brand associated with EV's. Nobody was clamoring for EV's. It was a niche, and it's still a niche. Its such a niche that governments are forced to give people tax breaks to buy them. When you have to pay people to buy something, they don't really want it. Automakers are spending an incredible amount of money per car to market EV's. They are spending relatively little on selling SUV's and pick up trucks by comparison. One day battery and charging technologies will be advanced enough to replicate ICE fill up processes and things will change quickly, but EV's will still be boring to me. No sound, fake sound = fail to me. People in the future won't even think about ICE cars because they never had an ICE car. They won't understand all the fuss and will think these discussions were silly.

Finally, engineers are not the smartest people in the world. A huge % of inventions have come from non engineers. iPod, iPhone, etc. People find a problem and come up with creative ideas to solve them. Trained engineers refine those ideas. Visionaries and Marketing people sell them at scale. Great inventions fail all the time. Betamax lost to VHS.

Great Inventions do fail a lot. That's why I don't even think EV's is even going to be a mass adopted thing with all the lack of infrastructure, and producing the battery takes a lot of sources as well. The next real thing will probably be some kind of Efuel which formula one is getting into as well for the future. All the gas stations in the world will be way more easily converted to a Efuel than converted into to a battery charger. We already have rolling blackouts. Now what are you going to do when the whole world is using battery vehicles? They already have a fuel that only uses 20% fossil fuel. My dad is not an engineer.

The people at Apple are engineers.

The fossil fuel will run out.

And the minerals for Batteries will not?

Your response is immature and frankly par for the course for you.

news flash, design people run Apple. Jobs and folks dreamed up the solutions. Engineering came after the big idea. They didn’t start it, nor do they dream up most stuff at Apple. If they did, they would run the company. Instead, Jobs did, as a visionary and now a bean counter and operations guy is in charge. No engineer’s to be found in any job of authority. Just like most companies: no engineers in charge of anything. Guess they aren’t that smart. Go ask Dad why Engineers are not in charge of anything.

I think he's a kid.

Correct, visionaries come up with the concept/idea, pass it along and ask engineers to develop.

This is why hydrogen is the solution. It's the most abundant element in the universe.

It's amazing how people who aren't engineers think they know more than the engineers and then resort to personal attacks because they lack the facts.

I think someone is trying to train an AI and using this forum to do so.

Name calling is done by those who don't have a legitimate point to make.

Rarely using all the available power is true for most high performance cars. If I took full advantage of my 2019 C63s HP and Torque I'd be buying a lot of tires. Once in awhile I'll step on it just for fun but if I did that all the time I'd be buying a lot of tires. Power is nice to have when you need it or want it.

The exotic supercars have been moving towards the hybrid format for a few years now and in the next year or two you'll see more sports hybrids trickling down. Corvette will be releasing a hybrid version in a couple of years. So I'm not surprised that the C63 is going in that direction as well. I'm ok with it since there are some advantages that make the change more acceptable (more power, lower center of gravity, reduced emissions and better gas mileage) and the C63s is overdue for bump in HP/TQ but I doubt I'll like the sound of a 4 cylinder exhaust. I'm not a fan of fake exhaust sound. I love my new-ish C63s but what I missed the most when I traded in my 2015 C63s Edition One was the music that came out of that exhaust.

One thing is for sure. I won't be trading in my BiTurbo V8 for a hybrid and I will eventually put on a complete Akropovic titanium exhaust on it.