What Will Your Next Car Look Like?
Few things capture the imagination like the mysterious future. Movies and television have shown us some pretty inventive possibilities of what automobiles would become. How did you imagine we would travel in the year 2010? The self-driven taxi from Total Recall? Hovering land speeders like in Star Wars? We imagined better, faster, cooler cars than ever. That isn’t the direction that technology has taken. Cars already do what we need them to do. No purpose other than extreme coolness would be served by having cars that hover. Cars already have sufficient speed that the highway patrol has to try to slow people down. In fact, in many places there’s so much traffic that cars can’t use the speed they already have. Aesthetics are still important, but rather than buying the flashiest possible car, people are choosing streamlined, attractive cars. After market upgrades are made to blend in with the original – boring – look of the car. Auto makers tout the vehicles’ reliability and safety records, which has improved exponentially in recent years. What do cars still leave to be desired? More practicality – fuel efficiency. Driving our cars is hard on our wallets because the price of gasoline has risen so much. The most recent innovation that’s catching everyone’s attention is cars that run on less gasoline, or even better, no gasoline at all. There are a lot of options for accomplishing this goal, from propane to hydrogen to biofuels. All of these technologies have challenges, especially in keeping their costs down enough that they will be economically comparable to gasoline powered cars. In the last few years, one technology has taken the lead and reached the car dealership: electricity. Fully electric cars are starting to appear at dealerships now – not far behind their hybrid counterparts. Toyota was the first to get its hybrid, the Prius, to consumers at a reasonable price. The other automakers weren’t far behind. The Ford Escape, Infiniti M35, Honda Civic and Nissan Altima are just a few of the offerings. Hybrids don’t have to be small anymore, either, as evidenced by GMC’s Sierra and Cadillac’s Escalade. The government has helped by offering incentives to those involved in manufacturing or buying cars that use less gasoline and are less damaging to the environment. You can go buy one of these cars today at your local Orange County Ford Dealer, Toyota Dealership or Texas Infiniti Dealership with no problem. The fully electric car is the next development we’ll see. You’ve seen them for quite a while, in experimental cars owned by the local power company or as spec cars at car shows. The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf are finally hitting showrooms. There are still some hurdles to overcome, like limited range and price and longevity of batteries, but this is clearly the direction that new cars are headed. One innovation that gets a lot less attention is just good old fashioned fuel efficiency. Even gasoline powered engines can be greatly improved if they just use less gas. This is a technology that’s been slowly but steadily improving for many years. There are gasoline powered cars getting 34-35 MPG – the Honda Civic and Ford Focus to name a few. This was unimaginable back in the 80’s when gas was only $1.35 a gallon and we loved our V8s. So while we’re unlikely to see cars like the DeLorean from Back to the Future or Kitt from the Knight Rider, cars will continue to evolve to meet our ever-changing needs. America’s love affair with the automobile is far from over.
Recent Comments