While one might think that today’s cars have every possible technological feature on them, or perhaps there is too much technology which only distracts drivers and makes operating a vehicle too complicated, they are still far from perfect and a lot more novelties and innovations are going to be implemented in cars in the next 10 years, that will make cars from science fiction movies look like vintage cars.
Future car technologies will mostly be noticeable on the materials used for construction, connectivity, safety and the types of fuel cars will run on.
Since the invention of cars, steel has been the material most used for making car bodies. Although it’s a high-quality material, it is pretty heavy and cars need a lot of energy to move that heavy structure. That means they burn a lot of fuel. Therefore, cars need to be made of more lightweight materials to make them more fuel-efficient. Some materials that are most likely to take the place that steel currently holds are fiberglass, carbon fiber and duraluminum.
Fiberglass is pretty strong and lightweight at the same time. Its advantages are that it is cheaper than other materials and it’s easy to form.
Carbon fiber is essentially plastic reinforced with carbon fibers. It’s a lot stronger than steel and more expensive than fiberglass, so it has been used mostly on race cars and luxurious sports cars.
Duraluminum is an aluminum alloy, made out of manganese, magnesium and copper. It’s stronger than aluminum, but it can still be easily forged and it is also used for aircraft frames because it’s very lightweight.
When it comes to technology used in cars, it mainly involves wireless connection that allows you to use the Internet in your car, as well as systems for vehicle-to-vehicle (V-2-V) communication and various safety features.
V-2-V communication will improve traffic safety by allowing drivers to emit information to other cars about the speed they are moving at, their direction and road conditions. A lot of collisions and traffic related injuries will be avoided that way.
There are a couple of useful features that are supposed to eliminate human error and take control over the vehicle if there is no time for the driver to react properly. One such idea involves a system which can detect when a car that’s moving in front of you stops suddenly and prepares the brakes so you only need to make a light contact with them and your car is more likely to stop in time and avoid a crash.
One of the most intriguing innovations that could radically change the way we operate vehicles is the driverless car concept. Google famously developed a car that moves using cameras and sensors and makes drivers obsolete. It’s one of the most revolutionary ideas in the last couple of decades, and such cars are already being road tested in the state of Nevada.
Fuel economy has always been a huge issue, and it will be even more so in the future. Oil prices are only going to go higher, and that, coupled with initiatives for a cleaner environment, brings people to think of alternative energy sources. For this reason, many car makers produce electric vehicles that usually run on lithium-ion batteries, as well as hybrid cars that combine electric motors and gasoline-powered engines.
Lately, car manufacturers have been experimenting with hydrogen vehicles. The hydrogen is used to power electric motors and the electricity is created thanks to fuel cells. Hydrogen cars can be more useful than electric vehicles that run on batteries because they provide better mileage.
So, considering how great advances in technology have been made in recent years, we can expect to see more zero-emission cars that don’t need drivers, that can communicate with other vehicles on the road and that are perfectly well connected to the Internet in order to facilitate the exchange of information.
This article’s been written in collaboration with Jordan Perch from DMV.com
