Where Is The Auto Industry Headed?
We’ve always tried to guess how things would be changed in the future. TV shows and cartoons have shown us some pretty ingenious 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? The sky was the limit, literally, for what cars would look like. 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. The police are busy trying to slow drivers down because our cars already go more than fast enough. A lot of the time we can’t even use the speed our cars are capable of because there’s too much traffic. Although we do want good looking cars, consumers are choosing cars that look good, but pretty boring. After market upgrades are made to blend in with the original - boring - look of the car. Huge improvements in reliability and safety have become more important than other considerations. Is there anything we need that our current cars don’t offer? 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 Honda Civic, Ford Escape, Nissan Altima, and the Infiniti M35 are just a few of the options. Cadillac’s Escalade and GMC’s Sierra prove that hybrids no longer have to be only small, lightweight cars. The government has encouraged the use of cars that consume less gasoline and don’t cause as much damage to the environment by offering financial incentives. You can go buy one of these cars today at your local Los Angeles Nissan Dealership or Car Dealers Des Moines with no problem. The next development we’ll see is the fully electric vehicle. You’ve seen them for quite a while, in experimental cars owned by the local power company or as spec cars at car shows. Finally cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt are 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. Look at the non-hybrid version of the Honda Civic, which gets 34 MPG or the Ford Focus with its 35 MPG highway. 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.