MORE JOULES FOR EVERYONE
Any carmaker worth its salt is busy getting its electric game together. Just look at the marques making their way to Formula E, the once-maligned racing series that uses batteries and volts instead of fossil fuels and fumes. Audi. BMW. Mercedes-Benz. Porsche. Even Maserati is rumoured to be joining the Amp Pack.
The racing arena is the perfect place to test and develop electric drivetrains that will ultimately filter down to everyday cars.
Electric vehicles are here to stay and in the next few years you can expect them to evolve into better-looking, better-driving alternatives. Hybridisation will increase, too, as a means to squeeze more power and efficiency from smaller capacity petrol engines.
The upcoming BMW Z4 will, for example, come standard with a mild-hybrid system to aid both in acceleration and powering ancillaries. Volvo has also pledged that all its vehicles will, from 2019, be either hybrid-electric or fully electric.THE RISE OF AUTONOMY
Although flying cars will remain the product of cartoon fiction - for now- the age of the autonomous car is nearly upon us. Just the other week Fiat Chrysler teamed up with BMW, Intel and Mobileye in their race to have fully autonomous cars rolling off the production line come 2021. Tesla is also working on driverless systems, as are non-traditional car firms such as Google and Apple.
Removing the unpredictable and sometimes volatile human being from behind the wheel holds the promise of fewer accidents and traffic jams. It'll also reduce our stress levels and give us more free time - up to an extra 50 minutes a day according to a McKinsey study.
Semi-autonomous driver aid systems will also become de rigueur in lesser models. We can already see evidence of this with the wider use of technologies such as lane-keeping assistance, blind-spot monitoring and adaptive cruise control.
SHARING IS CARINGUnlike the baby boomers, millennials and plurals would rather spend their disposable income on personal technology. The act of driving holds little appeal - as do the hassle and expenses associated with car upkeep.
So how do they want to get round? These tech-savvy generations are falling for car-sharing programmes such as Zipcar that, via an app on your smartphone, lets you access a car in your city pretty much 24/7. You can choose your model (even a van if you need some extra space) and keep it for as little as one hour or up to seven days. Fuel and insurance are included too, which makes the deal even sweeter.
Car ownership is as outdated as the VHS tape - at least in the millennial mind - and you can expect car sharing to spread and evolve over the next five years.
WINDSCREEN SWIPERS
Augmented reality can be an extremely helpful technology, but who wants to walk around in a dorky pair of Google Glasses to experience it? The automotive industry can get around this awkward issue by building augmented reality functionality into the windscreens of its cars. Toyota recently filed a patent for such a system and you can bet that other manufacturers will follow suit.
It makes perfect sense because that large expanse of glass in front of your nose is an ideal canvas upon which to project realtime information about surroundings. Restaurants. Parking arcades. Hijack hot spots. Traffic and weather conditions.This data can be beamed into special windscreens sandwiching an organic light-emitting diode film to make your journey safer and more enjoyable.
Augmented reality technology could even make you better around the racetrack as the ideal driving line could be shown just like in driving simulators like Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo.
The ultimate car of the future?Automotive futurism has been part of contemporary pop culture for as long as anybody cares to remember. Cartoons. Movies. Literature. Art.
All these genres have held different impressions of what the car of the future might look like - or will - look like. Some were half believable but many were nothing but ridiculous: fanciful abstractions built on the science of 10-year-old boys.
My favourite of these is still the DeLorean time machine that starred in the epic Back to the Future movie franchise. Why? Well, the ill-fated DeLorean DMC-12 actually looks like it comes from an era yet to be born. Even today there's something about its chiselled silhouette and stainless-steel skin that screams 'forward thinking'.It was an excellent base from which to build a machine capable of traversing past and present.
What cements it, though, is the range of fuels the car is capable of burning. Plutonium. Lightning. Garbage. Indeed, when equipped with the Mr Fusion Home Energy Reactor, the DeLorean morphs into one of the most eco-friendly transportation devices ever to be conceptualised.
It also hovers, which is kind of cool, and when taken up to 141km/h can outrun pretty much everything, including time itself. The ultimate car of the future...