Who amongst us isn’t familiar with the 1960’s style utopian vision of the cars of the future? From the Jetsons, to ‘Blade Runner’, to ‘Back to the Future’, the futuristic flying vehicle is part of our shared collective culture, and the dream of many an inventor. But maybe it turns out that the future of personal transportation is not really about the flying car. With the direction that things are moving in today with spiking energy prices and global warming, all signs point to a future of modesty and energy efficiency rather than wild dreams of hovercrafts. For the last thirty years we’ve been thinking ‘big’ but maybe its finally time to start thinking small.
BIGGER ISN’T ALWAYS BETTER
The rush of buying bigger and more powerful vehicles, particularly during a time when oil prices where cheap, created a disincentive to develop technologies and methods that could cope with a high-priced energy future. But technologies for energy efficiency were developed, and prototypes exist. And soon, a significant number of them will appear in all vehicles. The traditional combustion engine will be replaced by small electric motors, the gasoline and diesel with hydrogen, and the lonesome car battery will soon be joined by better and more efficient companions of the lithium-ion kind.
The car of the future is a small fuel-efficient vehicle. It will be light, weighing no more than 50% of what the average vehicle currently weighs. Though hybrids are a short term solution, trends indicate that such vehicle will be electric, as the technology has finally achieved the power and efficiency to make this a workable solution. And very likely, such vehicle will be powered by either solar panels on your roof, or solar panels on the vehicle itself. This does not mean that there will not be other types of vehicles, but instead that rather of looking at fossil fuels as the answer to everything, vehicles will become much more specialized. Small electric powered vehicles will be the main form of transportation for the average city dweller. More powerful hybrid or hydrogen fuel cell trucks, or possibly even SUVs, will be used to carry larger loads across town, and heavy duty rigs and construction equipment will probably be using biofuels or even some form of flex fuels (mixture of fossil fuels and ethanol) to drive large loads across long distances.
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN DIFFERENT FORMS OF ENERGY
You’ll find yourself confronted with a number of new terms these days when it comes fuel-efficient vehicles. Hydrogen powered, fuel-cell, plug-in, electric, hybrid, biofuels, emission-free. What do these all mean? They all relate to the matter in which power is generated in a vehicle. Biofuels are just like gasoline, except that they can be generated from corn, plants, and even waste; Electric vehicles can come powered by fuel cells (effectively hydrogen powered batteries) and plug-ins that can be recharged at the power plug. And while technically there’s no such thing as emissions free, this term refers to the fact that the vehicle itself does not emit CO2 when it is running.  Not all of these technologies are created equal, however, biofuels can raise the price of food and destroy arable sources of land; and hydrogen is commonly created by burning fossil fuels. The solution? Be an informed consumer.
A more important question to ask might be ‘What is the place of private transportation in the future?’ Regardless of short-term business concerns, and the familiarity of the suburban-2-car-garage model that many of us are used to, the future of private transportation is not owning your vehicle. We are already seeing car-sharing services like Zip Car popping up all over urban areas to augment the taxi-cab and public transportation systems. And as we know, the demographic trend is moving away from suburban living, and back to urban areas: this will only increase the market for creative shared-transportation systems.
Regardless of what happens, or how we move around our cities, there is little doubt that small vehicles will always play an important place in our lives, whether they are owned or rented or shared. The technologies mentioned here are some of the solutions that car manufacturers are exploring to create better and more environmentally friendly vehicles. Clearly though, while the movement towards fuel efficiency is a hugely important trend – it is only a small part of the picture. Anyone with an eye to the future needs to be thinking outside of the realm of fuel efficiency and energy and really considering the wider social and demographic issues in how we use, own (or don’t own), share, and relate to cars.
