The rate of advance in car technology seems to accelerate as time goes on, and with the advent of automation and cars starting to ‘think for themselves’ the march towards the truly driverless car is already well under way. Looking to the near future we can be sure our cars will become even more high tech.
What can we look forward to?
1. Biometric vehicle access
Keyless entry is already here of course, but how about fingerprint or even eyeball recognition? Not so fanciful – fingerprint recognition is already used in other fields such as smartphones and tablets, so why not cars?
The thought of simply touching your car to unlock and start it up may not be a mere thought for much longer.
2. Active window displays
You might start to feel like you’re piloting a fighter jet with heads up displays on the windscreen glass, but it’s already here and likely to be enhanced over the next few years.
Improvements to the image quality and reducing the price will put it within reach of more car classes, and it’s certainly a safety aid as it keeps your eyes on the road in front.
3. Smaller engine supercar performance
Smaller engines already perform better than their predecessors – a prime example is Ford’s Econetic range of 1.0 litre engines used to power cars as large as the Focus.
Ford are also working on engines that, while being lighter and married to lighter carbon fibre car bodies, can provide genuine supercar performance and power output while being only four cylinder, lower capacity units than the norm.
A four cylinder supercar capable of 200-plus mph is perhaps not far away.
4. Transparent instrument panels – OLED technology
OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) is the latest in display technology and tipped to become more prevalent in car instrument displays within the next few years. The Apple Watch has an OLED display, and it’s the next step from the high resolution displays on some current smartphones, tablets and computers.
The OLED panel makes for an instrument panel with a sharper display, no need for incandescent bulbs and has better viewing angles than a conventional one.
5. Enhanced touchscreens
Touchscreens are already here, but their scope is likely to be improved across many car models.
The all-electric Tesla Model S, for example, features a huge 17 inch touchscreen replacing practically every conventional button. It controls the air conditioning, the sunroof and even the suspension settings.
6. Interchangeable carbon fibre body panels
The idea here is to use ultra-light (but also ultra-expensive) carbon fibre panels to re-configure the car so you can have, in effect, two or more different car types in one.
If the concept, being pioneered by Smart, passes crash testing processes it could be here by 2020.
7. Driver override systems
Systems that intervene by applying the brakes when a low speed collision is imminent are already here – and on lower priced city cars, too. The technology is likely to take further steps over the next few years as the car makes more of its own decisions. It’s the sort of thing that could be built into the process of learning to drive to complement the theory and practical lessons learners already take.
The next step could, for example, be cars being able to take control at higher speeds and even decide to slow the car down when the driver is applying heavy acceleration. As it becomes more and more natural this will feel less like the machines are taking over and more like a helpful piece of safety technology.
8. Vehicle tracking
Some tracking is here now; insurance companies use telematics to track driving behaviour of young drivers, for example. It’s a distinct possibility insurers will encourage more policy holders to agree to driver tracking so that they can deliver better premiums to safer drivers and more accurately assess the risk that drivers pose.
