It’s the year 2060 and thus 20 years since the UK and other global governments outlawed the sale of gasoline and diesel-engined cars. Every single car available is either solely battery-powered or has a fuel cell on board. Emissions at the tailpipe are zero, but concerns that power-station emissions – the power stations that provide the electricity for battery-powered cars – are getting too high are at fever pitch. Worse, society is ‘running out’ of the rare earths and other metals that are essential for making electric motors, batteries and fuel cells. Planet Earth as we know it is under threat, mass protests rife, rare-earth wars occurring. Huge holes in the ground form as man digs for the materials needed to make the necessary batteries and fuel cells. Holes the size of New York litter the planet. Cities as we know it are destroyed to gain access to the materials essential for creating batteries and fuel cells.
Meanwhile Trump Jnr Jnr has pulled out of the 2055 London environmental agreement and we’re also ‘running out’ of the coal needed to feed most power stations that charge the millions of battery-powered cars. Nuclear power stations are still an emission-free option, but since Paris was destroyed by the 2030 nuclear reactor leak, man has never trusted the free power-source that cost two million lives. Wind power? North Korea demonstrated how vulnerable a country’s electric supply is when it took out Japan’s wind farms in 2025 and it’s been unpopular ever since.
Solar power? The African states put paid to that in the Great Solar War of 2035. Personal mobility is at threat. Cars, planes, the few trains that still exist, all need electricity to perform, yet little of it is available.
Then someone has an idea – it’s Al Gore’s great granddaughter. Could oil be used to solve the problem? Could oil once again be reformed into gasoline and diesel? Could internal combustion engines power cars and planes?
The internal combustion engine as a concept used to work so well, so efficiently. Emissions in the so-called ‘IC-age’ were so low that one could sit in a sealed, enclosed space for 24 hours when an IC engine was running without so much as enduring a light cough. Oil in 2060 is still plentiful and renews itself constantly, albeit very slowly.
UKi Media and Events launches a new publication called Internal Combustion Technology International and it immediately wins thousands of adoring fans.
Grandfathers and grandmothers are contacted: ‘How did internal combustion work?’ ask the 2060 engineers of an aging population. Swiftly, battery- and fuel-cell-engined vehicles disappear from internet showrooms as the ‘new’ clean energy concept of internal combustion sweeps the globe.
Slowly man reclaims the land once set aside for the rare-earth mines, creating new communities and opportunities. Man recreates the V12, the V10, the V8. Beautiful IC noises resonate throughout the corridors of roads across the globe. Lewis Hamilton’s grandson becomes the 2060 F1 champion, powered by ‘clean’ Mercedes-Benz IC-power.
The Middle East is once again rich and hated for its access to extremely huge oil reserves. Trump Jnr Jnr plans an invasion.