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People have always tried to guess how things would be different in the future. The future of the automobile has been a popular topic of TV shows and cartoons for many years. How did you imagine we would travel in the year 2010? The self-driven taxi from Total Recall? Hovering land speeders like in Star Wars? The sky was the limit, literally, for what cars would look like. Technology has taken a completely different direction. Our needs are already met by the cars that we’ve had for years. Hovering would be cool, but wouldn’t really serve any other purpose. Cars already have sufficient speed that the highway patrol has to try to slow people down. In fact, in many places there’s so much traffic that cars can’t use the speed they already have. Although we do want good looking cars, consumers are choosing cars that look good, but pretty boring. After market upgrades are made to blend in with the original - boring - look of the car. Huge improvements in reliability and safety have become more important than other considerations. What do cars still leave to be desired? Fuel efficiency - even more practicality. Driving our cars is hard on our wallets because the price of gasoline has risen so much. Cars that run on less gasoline, or none at all, are the hot sellers. Automakers have a lot of choices for reaching this goal, from hydrogen to biofuel to propane. All of these technologies have challenges, especially in keeping their costs down enough that they will be economically comparable to gasoline powered cars. One technology has taken the lead in the last few years and reached the consumer via the car dealership showroom: electricity. Fully electric cars are starting to appear at dealerships now - not far behind their hybrid counterparts. The Toyota Prius was the first to be offered at a price that large numbers of consumers could afford. The other automakers weren’t far behind. Choices now include the Infiniti M35, Nissan Altima, Ford Escape and Honda Civic. Cadillac’s Escalade and GMC’s Sierra prove that hybrids no longer have to be only small, lightweight cars. The government has encouraged the use of cars that consume less gasoline and don’t cause as much damage to the environment by offering financial incentives. You can go buy one of these cars today at your local Riverside Ford Dealer or Car Dealers Des Moines with no problem. The next development we’ll see is the fully electric vehicle. You’ve seen them for quite a while, in experimental cars owned by the local power company or as spec cars at car shows. Finally cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt are hitting showrooms. New cars are clearly headed in this direction despite unresolved issues like price of batteries and limited range. One innovation that gets a lot less attention is just good old fashioned fuel efficiency. A car can run on gasoline, but use a lot less of it. Though less flashy, fuel efficiency has been slowly and steadily improving for many years. There are gasoline powered cars getting 34-35 MPG - the Honda Civic and Ford Focus to name a few. I never would have imagined such numbers when I filled up my first V8 muscle car when gas cost only $1.35 a gallon. So while we’re unlikely to see cars like the DeLorean from Back to the Future or Kitt from the Knight Rider, cars will continue to evolve to meet our ever-changing needs. America’s love affair with the automobile is far from over.

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