Future of the car

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The future of the automobile is a controversial topic, with some advocates arguing that the car has no future, and others that the car will in the future supplant most other forms of transport.

There are significant challenges in the near future to continued use of the car:

  • Petroleum refining and car use are major factors in pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
  • 50-70% of US oil production is consumed by cars and trucks. This is more due to the size, weight, shape and power of conventional cars than to necessity (See Messerschmitt KR200).
  • Cars are one of the most dangerous forms of transport. 1 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide, of which around 40,000 in the US (roughly the equivalent of one event the scale of 9/11 every month). The car is one of the major killers of people under 40.
  • Increasing population and prosperity tends to increase traffic congestion.

Contents

[edit] Technological advances

With off the shelf technology it is already possible to roughly halve the fuel consumption of cars, as illustrated by the SmILE. But there are also many possible advances in technology that could influence the future of the car :

[edit] Energy sources

  • Hybrid cars (including small or diesel ones) and more advanced combustion engines (eg. gas turbines) will improve fuel efficiency. Toyota intends to have hybrid versions for all its models by 2012, including the hybrid Toyota Prius which is already available. Ford intends to make five hybrids available by 2008. Both Ford and GM have also begun to develop hybrid SUV's. The next step in hybrid technology is Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
  • Utilization of waste heat from the engine as useful mechanical energy through exhaust powered steam, stirling engines, thermal diodes or etc..[1]
  • Dualmode car or vehicles able to platoon that use relatively small electric motors and fuel supplies or battery reserves for door-to-door service off electrically powered arteries.
  • Battery electric vehicles have the potential of using locally available sustainable energy resources while at the same time reducing vehicle energy requirements by 1/2 to 1/4 when using batteries to store electricity.
  • Hydrogen cars could eventually be produced that use sustainable energy resources and water. The resulting hydrogen could be burned in an engine or converted back into electricity by a fuel cell and its support systems instead of a battery to be powered as an electric vehicle. Due to the additional conversion losses and added distribution and support logistics overall efficiency is currently not as good as current ICE ("internal combustion engine") vehicles. Rather it is far simpler and more efficient (by a factor of three to six by some estimates) to transmit locally available sustainable electricity directly into the batteries of a battery electric vehicle.
  • Alternative fuels are being proposed : alcohol fuel, water (see hydrogen fuel), highly compressed air (see air car), garbage, hemp oil, magnetism, solar power, Tesla electric cars (with no car batteries), and high speed electric cars (freeway-capable).

[edit] Materials

[edit] Others

  • E911-compliant mobile phones required in the US by 2006 can be used to coordinate ridesharing.
  • Improvements to hands-free technology will increase driver safety.[2]
  • Radio technology (DSRC or wireless vehicle safety communications) will permit on-board collision warnings.
  • Traffic lights will continue to become smarter. This could include short range milimeter band radar, neural network processors and sharing wireless networks with the cars.
  • The smart car, intelligent car and driverless car making driving easier and safer.
  • Cars linking up to form platoons and car-trains.
  • Dualmode cars platooning on a guideway (RUF, www.ruf.dk) or a Personal Rapid Transit system, such as ULTra, for increased speed, safety and economy.
  • Bionic cars.
  • The potential application of magnetic levitation to transportation has been known since the 19th century and been implemented in numerous magnetic levitation trains. Although trains with fixed guideways are not cars, since cars are somewhat smaller they could be loaded onto trains to move them rapidly across country for long distances. This would obviously require a committed national infrastructure construction effort. Due to their lack of rolling friction and smooth ride they can travel much faster than conventional trains. While high speeds dramatically increase aerodynamic drag, its small frontal with only one lead car area makes it less of a factor than with cars. Laminar flow losses are insubstantial, and evacuating the atmosphere in a tunnel would nearly eliminate both of these losses and allow for supersonic speeds.
  • Although flying cars have been proposed for decades, cost and air traffic control issues have so far prevented mass use of private aircraft. Energy consumption is also considerably greater for current aircraft than typical cars. Though NASA is said to be currently working on a system whereby everyone who intends to fly would have his own personal air space.
  • Future cars may include a heads-up display projecting information onto the windshield to supplement or replace the dashboard. See Heads-Up Display for details.

[edit] Competing solutions

The list of modes of transport above generally pollute less than the conventional (petrol) car. Additionally they are claimed to have other significant benefits in the following fields:

  • Reduced traffic death tolls
  • Space requirements, both for parking and driving (extra roads/lanes, sometimes cutting nature zones in half)
  • Life-cycle resource usage, and pollution
    • energy expenditure for production and driving
    • air pollution, ground water pollution, toxic waste, noise pollution and climate change, through production, driving and disposal
  • Social inclusion
  • Economic and social equity
  • Liveable streets and cities, towns and villages v.s. sprawl and car dependence
  • For some solutions : Increased, regular, low-impact exercise, tailored to the needs of human bodies. This goes for public transport as well to the extent that they are combined in a multi-modal transport chain including walking or cycling.

The benefits of possible future cars, not yet in widespread use, like zero-emissions vehicles over these alternatives, would be

  • Increased mobility in rural settings and in some other areas where traffic jams are not severe
  • Possibly higher social status
  • Overall a better provision for privacy
  • Profit for the multinational firms producing cars, and possibly for their employees
  • Transology: M.I.T. Future Car Workshop

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Cars specifically

[edit] Transportation technology

[edit] References

This article needs additional references or sources to improve its verifiability.
Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. This article has been tagged since December 2006. (help)
  1. ^ "BMW unveils the turbosteamer concept", Gizmag, December 14, 2005. Retrieved on 2006-11-15.
  2. ^ Randy Frank. "Voice Recognition Facilitates Multitasking and Focus on the Road", Auto Electronics, July 1, 2005. Retrieved on 2006-11-15.
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