What car..... in 2045
Discussion
A lot of us can remember cars in 1985. The days of Petrol engines, Carburettors, and viynl.... 30 years on things are a bit different.
So 30 years on, 2045, what will our cars look like?
Will we be on Electric or Hydrogen Fuel Cells are something completely different? Will we be driving ourselves or will Google be our chauffeur? Could we even have flying cars?
What are your thoughts?
So 30 years on, 2045, what will our cars look like?
Will we be on Electric or Hydrogen Fuel Cells are something completely different? Will we be driving ourselves or will Google be our chauffeur? Could we even have flying cars?
What are your thoughts?
Here's my 0.02p worth:
- Driverless cars will be fairly common in developed countries (especially around big cities like London, even driverless taxis perhaps).
- Large engine performance cars will have had their swansong about 20 years before 2045 and EV's and petrol electric hybrids will have a much more dominant market share, it’s likely that pure petrol/diesel engines operating on their own will be totally gone in mainstream manufacturers with all city cars being EV/fuel cell and everything else some form of hybrid/fuel cell cars.
- EV charging infrastructure at most ‘fuelling stations’
- Hydrogen filling stations for the fuel cell cars (probably a similar market share to hybrids EV's today) becoming more widespread.
- New driver insurance will be utterly horrific (more so than it is now) with most plumping for a driverless car.
- New cars will be taxed on mileage from an internal transponder with incentives to get older cars off the roads to be replaced with new cars (think the scrappage scheme and EV incentive schemes).
Edited by PanzerCommander on Wednesday 25th November 10:42
Surely the correct answer is MX-5 mk8?
It's definitely be interesting. I think the toughest thing over the next 50 years will be integrating the surviving vehicles from the late 20th and early 21st century with the new transport systems.
In movies, you never see a mix, everyone's in a flying car. There's never a beardy chap waffling on about how his immaculately maintained 320d has been in the family for 40 years, and see how modern it was in it's day with run-flat tyres to help reliability when you were actually in contact with the road-surface...
ETA - I think there will be a lot less human-human interaction by 2045. The ability to have almost limitless consumables delivered will mean the we'll all stay at home more. Work will be increasingly remote for tertiary industries, with video-con and web related interaction very much the norm. This will make the country-wide transport systems more business oriented. Cities will be a challenge. I can see significant ares of cities becoming private vehicle free, and serviced by autonomous systems, driverless taxis as mentioned above and the like, to help get around the liability issues of having the public on the highway with autonomous vehicles.
It's definitely be interesting. I think the toughest thing over the next 50 years will be integrating the surviving vehicles from the late 20th and early 21st century with the new transport systems.
In movies, you never see a mix, everyone's in a flying car. There's never a beardy chap waffling on about how his immaculately maintained 320d has been in the family for 40 years, and see how modern it was in it's day with run-flat tyres to help reliability when you were actually in contact with the road-surface...
ETA - I think there will be a lot less human-human interaction by 2045. The ability to have almost limitless consumables delivered will mean the we'll all stay at home more. Work will be increasingly remote for tertiary industries, with video-con and web related interaction very much the norm. This will make the country-wide transport systems more business oriented. Cities will be a challenge. I can see significant ares of cities becoming private vehicle free, and serviced by autonomous systems, driverless taxis as mentioned above and the like, to help get around the liability issues of having the public on the highway with autonomous vehicles.
Edited by Smitters on Wednesday 25th November 10:44
There won't be privately owned cars on the whole. Back in the day people like my grand parents saved up and purchased brand new cars. Finance did not exist then. Now most people rent their cars with a monthly bill. In the future this will change to paying for individual taxi rides. The cars will be electric and this will be ordered via your smart chip (imbedded inside your head). This business model is currently transforming the music industry. Cars will follow suit. Ownership of anything by the masses will rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
Smitters said:
In movies, you never see a mix, everyone's in a flying car. There's never a beardy chap waffling on about how his immaculately maintained 320d has been in the family for 40 years, and see how modern it was in it's day with run-flat tyres to help reliability when you were actually in contact with the road-surface...
Ha - you make a good point there, though Demolition Man had a crazy old (relatively speaking) 1970s Oldsmobile in it. 
To be honest I think it would make a lot of sense for mundane journeys (e.g. commuting) to be a fully automated process, leaving the weekends etc free for enjoying your classic Focus ST or whatever.
I know some people bemoan autonomy but I actually think it could possibly help in the long term. Modern cars today still have to take account of the fact that they can only be driven by a human, so manufacturers are constantly trying to find ways of making the mundane more effortless (e.g. the death of the manual box). Once these mundane journeys are taken care of by fully automated transportation it frees manufacturers up to make their "fully interactive drivers cars" more mechanical, because there would be no need for these cars to be used in any other way.
Obviously they would be prohibitively expensive - I suspect the vast majority of people driving cars on the road now look at them as purely utilitarian devices. They would not feel compelled to "go for a drive at the weekend", and unless the car was particularly special (e.g. a fast sports car) it's tough to make a case of why you'd want to go for a manual drive anyway...
I reckon the London LEZ will be a ZEZ before too long (2030-2040 I reckon) - all vehicles in the central area will be battery powered, hopefully starting with the buses, taxis & delivery vans. It's starting already to an extent - any time I see a new London bus on its delivery run from the factory at Falkirk, it always seems to be a hybrid.
surveyor said:
A lot of us can remember cars in 1985. The days of Petrol engines, Carburettors, and viynl.... 30 years on things are a bit different.
How many cars did you get in 1985 that could play vinyl?There won't be cars in 2045, humans will have destroyed themselves and cows will rule the world. Or maybe not. Might be dolphins.
Smitters said:
In movies, you never see a mix, everyone's in a flying car. There's never a beardy chap waffling on about how his immaculately maintained 320d has been in the family for 40 years, and see how modern it was in it's day with run-flat tyres to help reliability when you were actually in contact with the road-surface...
In Back to the Future 2 they had companies offering to convert old cars into flying models, so not quite what you mean, but the cars still exist. Craikeybaby said:
I don't know if they'll still be cars, the way I see the future is autonomous electric pods which are summoned on demand.
Hopefully attitudes and technology will have moved on enough so that a lot of the journeys done today aren't required.
Good point. One would hope that in 2045 the need to actually commute, or even for an office of computers to exist, is the exception rather than the norm.Hopefully attitudes and technology will have moved on enough so that a lot of the journeys done today aren't required.
My nightmare scenario is that we will only be allowed to use public transport as cars are too dangerous even if limited to walking pace and fitted with cotton wool for bumpers and pumping out only fluffy bunny scent. Income tax rates will then be increased to 75% to cover the loss of revenue from road tax, fuel duty, and fines. There will also be a small subsidiary tax to cover the dole cheques of Brake until they find something new to whine about.
I expect to be long dead by then but hopefully someone will resurrect this thread and test my predictions.
I expect to be long dead by then but hopefully someone will resurrect this thread and test my predictions.
Things will be broadly similar to today. None of this BTTF2 nonsense. It's a dull prediction, but probably the closest to the truth.
Our whole society is set up to work in a certain way. Wholesale changes simply aren't possible.
With the internet, Skype etc, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to travel for meetings anymore, yet we're building a trillion pound railway system to cut the journey time from London to Birmingham by three nanoseconds. This isn't being done without foundation and that foundation certainly isn't anything to do with private individuals from London fancying a day trip to one of the most boring places on earth.
Where there's a will, there's a way. What we're missing is the will.
Our whole society is set up to work in a certain way. Wholesale changes simply aren't possible.
With the internet, Skype etc, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to travel for meetings anymore, yet we're building a trillion pound railway system to cut the journey time from London to Birmingham by three nanoseconds. This isn't being done without foundation and that foundation certainly isn't anything to do with private individuals from London fancying a day trip to one of the most boring places on earth.
Where there's a will, there's a way. What we're missing is the will.
ferrariF50lover said:
Things will be broadly similar to today. None of this BTTF2 nonsense. It's a dull prediction, but probably the closest to the truth.
Our whole society is set up to work in a certain way. Wholesale changes simply aren't possible.
With the internet, Skype etc, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to travel for meetings anymore, yet we're building a trillion pound railway system to cut the journey time from London to Birmingham by three nanoseconds. This isn't being done without foundation and that foundation certainly isn't anything to do with private individuals from London fancying a day trip to one of the most boring places on earth.
Where there's a will, there's a way. What we're missing is the will.
Yet journalists where driven around a state in the US recently by cars with no drivers....Our whole society is set up to work in a certain way. Wholesale changes simply aren't possible.
With the internet, Skype etc, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to travel for meetings anymore, yet we're building a trillion pound railway system to cut the journey time from London to Birmingham by three nanoseconds. This isn't being done without foundation and that foundation certainly isn't anything to do with private individuals from London fancying a day trip to one of the most boring places on earth.
Where there's a will, there's a way. What we're missing is the will.
Are things THAT different from 30 years ago? Most of us still roll around on wheels, moved with motors driven by explosions like some Victorian engine.
I'd love to think that we will all be able to fly in 3 dimensions, picked up and deposited by drones but I have a feeling we will still be rolling around on wheels.
I'd love to think that we will all be able to fly in 3 dimensions, picked up and deposited by drones but I have a feeling we will still be rolling around on wheels.
In developed countries, at least;
Still lots of private car ownership. Almost all of it electrically powered from renewables or nuclear. Usage of IC engined vehicles very tightly restricted, forbidden in most urban areas. Widespread adoption of partially or fully autonomous vehicles, with the proportion of people qualified to drive themselves rapidly falling. Very much lower levels of air pollution and road death and injury than today.
Still lots of private car ownership. Almost all of it electrically powered from renewables or nuclear. Usage of IC engined vehicles very tightly restricted, forbidden in most urban areas. Widespread adoption of partially or fully autonomous vehicles, with the proportion of people qualified to drive themselves rapidly falling. Very much lower levels of air pollution and road death and injury than today.
swisstoni said:
Are things THAT different from 30 years ago? Most of us still roll around on wheels, moved with motors driven by explosions like some Victorian engine.
I'd love to think that we will all be able to fly in 3 dimensions, picked up and deposited by drones but I have a feeling we will still be rolling around on wheels.
This for me. Things will no doubt be different, but I expect we will still be actively driving 'normal' cars. Likely to be lots of EVs.I'd love to think that we will all be able to fly in 3 dimensions, picked up and deposited by drones but I have a feeling we will still be rolling around on wheels.
Hell, in 25 years time we might reach 'peak battery' and realise that we can't keep plundering the earth for materials to build batteries and have to go down a different route. Perhaps the hydrogen fuel cell will be the answer (finally!).
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff