Where is the automobile industry headed?

When analyzing what the future of automobiles looks like, you must think about the past and the future. This being the evolution of automobiles up to this point, and the future evolution of them. The past can create a trend that can lead to the future, which can be seen through older articles and studies about automobiles and authors predicting the future. Currently, it looks like the future is headed towards more efficient hybrids, electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cell cars. But the main question is what type of vehicle is going to dominante the future of automobiles. 

The first main discussion would be hybrids as that is what the majority of new cars are today. One article I read had a lot about hybrids and how they dominate the automobile industry now and will continue to in years to come. The author states a claim in the beginning by proposing how since hybrids were first produced in the US, they have increased in efficiency and popularity (Rockhold, 1). He also begins talking about how the future is headed towards hybrid cars more than full electric cars. This is because when gas and electricity are used in the correct ways together, as the gas burns you are making the energy back in electricity. This is incredibly useful considering how expensive gas is becoming in the recent year. His overall claim in the article is how hybrid cars are one of the most wise investments someone in today’s time can make. There are many different types of hybrid cars, for example, the plug in hybrid, regenerating brake hybrid, and the full hybrid. The plug-in hybrid is one where there is a separate battery and you have to plug the car in to charge it and only assist the motor. The regenerating brake hybrid charges the separate battery by the friction in the brakes. And the full hybrid uses the electric motor to actually run the car part time. There isn’t really that big of a difference in the different types of hybrids as they all contain some of the same parts. A full hybrid might also have regenerative braking and assist the motor when there isn’t enough battery to run the entire car on its own. 

One of the biggest problems with hybrid cars today would be the fact that they are overrated. This is because many new car manufacturers have a vehicle that is barely considered a hybrid and market it as a hybrid. This is just for marketing purposes to raise sales because the majority of people want a hybrid car. But the big problem with this is that they are barely more efficient than a normal new gas vehicle. They just have a separate battery that gets regenerated from the breaks and then the electric motor will assist the gas motor at highway cruising speeds. This really only affects highway mileage which some people don’t even drive on the highway that much. So the hybrid system really isn’t that efficient in reducing gas mileage as you could do nearly the same thing with a better transmission. For example, if a car has a higher overdrive gear then it could get insane gas mileage because the gears are so high. Another large problem with hybrid vehicles is that some are more expensive than the standard version of the car. This makes people go with the base or standard version of the car considering the hybrid model is sometimes drastically more expensive. A person with a higher iq would understand that you would save more money in the long run, but most people just think at the moment when purchasing cars. The last problem with hybrid cars is maintenance. Because hybrid vehicles are still relatively new, maintenance becomes a basic problem as with any other vehicle. There is more electronics and components to the ecu, which make maintenance harder and more expensive (Motavalli, 2).

The next type of car that is beginning to gain more and more popularity is the electric car. An article about the road to gasoline free cars made great points that I strongly agree with. The author from this article makes a stand on clean-energy cars saying that in the next few years, one out of every two cars on the road will be some sort of clean-energy car. He takes a stand on how the hardships faced with producing clean energy cars are a large set-back, but most companies take the risk to stride for saving the environment. He also goes into a more political side of things talking about regulations and the economy. Another set-back that he mentions is the lack of companies that produce parts and batteries for these cars. This is one of the biggest problems with electric cars as parts are scarce, so if the car breaks down, it could be in the shop for awhile. The electric car has it’s pros and cons but overall it is said to be one of the most efficient vehicles as it is all electric. In my opinion there are more downsides to the electric car, at least in current times. These problems consist of, where the energy is coming from to charge the cars, maintenance, price, and availability, which could all be resolved in the future. When people think of electric cars, they think of totally green powered vehicles. But this is not truly the case as some of the energy used to charge the vehicles is produced by burning fossil fuels. This can be resolved as more places are powered by green energy and it becomes more widespread. Another big problem with electric vehicles is their price. Electric cars like teslas come with a very heavy price tag as well as a rather large maintenance bill when the time comes. Although the base price of a tesla is around the same as an average new car today, it is very rare to simply get a base model car considering just a few luxury add ons racks up the price tag. But maintenance on these cars is also very scarce, as some tires shops won’t even change a tire on a Tesla because they have special tires with foam in them. This means you would have to take it either to a special shop that will charge extensively for labor, or get it shipped back to tesla. The last big problem with these cars is it is very hard to obtain one. For example, unless you buy a used Tesla, you will have to go and pre-order one through tesla and wait for it to be available. So overall electric vehicles are not what they seem to be, although they are more efficient than most cars today, they are much more of a hassle then gas or hybrid vehicles. 

One of the most efficient cars that the future has in store is the hydrogen fuel cell car. This car currently is less known as there are pretty much no production models available to be purchased by the public. But this car is one of the most efficient all around because of how they have no emissions other then water and hot air. They are also the most efficient because of how they are refueled. It takes about the same amount of time to refill a hydrogen fuel cell car as it does a normal gasoline powered car. So there is no 4 hour delay waiting for an electric car to charge. They also have about the same range of an electric car, which will go up in the future as the fuel cells become more effective. There really only are a few downfalls to these cars. One being the price of hydrogen, which will go down as these cars are further mass produced. Another problem being there are not really any manufactures, which as the technology and popularity continues to grow, more companies will manufacture them. Overall hydrogen cars have nearly the same downsides as electric cars except for the time it takes to fuel them. But unlike electric cars, hydrogen cars aren’t really being manufactured, so these downfalls have not had time to be corrected. 

Overall, my current opinion is that the hydrogen car is going to dominate the distant future as it already seems to be the most efficient. Although there aren’t many produced, when production picks up these cars are going to save the environment because of the zero emissions. Although the hybrid car is currently dominating the industry, that is just because of the availability of them and how they are marketed. Whenever hydrogen cars begin to grow like the electric car is now, the hydrogen car will be dominating the industry. 

Work Cited

 

Consumer Reports. Fueling the Future. www.ConsumerReports.org October 2004

Rockhold, John. The Hybrid Evolution. Mother Earth News. October, 2005

Jim, Motavalli. The Road Ahead for Gasoline-Free Cars. The Futurist. March-April 2012

Arne Höltl, Cathy Macharis, Klaas De Brucker. Pathways to Decarbonise the European Car  Fleet: A Scenario Analysis Using the Backcasting Approach. Energies. December

HR: previously written annotated bibliography, Hunter Maul