The Evolution and Future of the Car

Just like many other products over the past time, the car’s design has dramatically changed over the years. These changes have ranged from putting forth simple cosmetic manipulations for the sake of “vehicle fashion”, in a sense, to more practical changes such as edits in a typical car’s design that improve energy efficiency. In this document, I am going to talk about the different attributes of a car that have been evolving for the past few centuries. After that, I’ll be providing a plausible insight onto the future of each of these attributes.

When the first car-like devices were coming out in the late, late 1800’s/early 1900’s, cars were almost nothing like what they are today. You see, back then a lot of cars looked like those horse-drawn carriages you see from time to time in places like, say, Kansas City, Kansas. The only real difference was that there were no horses needed to make them move! Anyways, as the 20^th century progressed to the half-mark, the typical car design became more and more streamlined, with the chassis becoming more and more integrated with the bodywork. When that happened, the typical car design began to resemble, more and more, that of a modern car – with the chassis and bodywork being relatively low to the ground, and not fitting together like some sort of puzzle, like the predecessors. Setting aside this major change in “fitting-style”, there was also a drastic change in the bodywork as well. As the 20^th century progressed as a whole, car designs also began to progress from clunky, angular bodywork build to curvy, and more sculpture-like bits of bodywork. Aside from appearance, cars have also evolved in other ways, too.

When cars first started rolling off the production lines in the early, early 20^th century, the common vehicles really weren’t designed to help protect occupants in a crash. Though it is true that there were no, say, spikes on the steering wheel intentionally made to kill the driver in a crash, there were really no design features, inside or out, that were specifically designed to prevent death and reduce occupant injury. Instead, many of the designs, in the first part of the 20^th century, were more concerned about how the cars themselves would “survive” in a crash.It really wasn’t until the 50’s and 60’s that car safety as we know it today really got started. During those times, one of the most effective safety devices came out with cars: the seatbelt. Though crude at those times, it certainly proved its worthwhile. After the seatbelt came safety advancements in the structural design of the car. On the outside, crumple zones were put in place in the front end to help absorb energy in a crash, and, of course, reinforced safety cages were implemented into the passenger cabin to help keep occupants from being crushed. And on the inside, came more forgiving interiors, such as the later addition of head restraints on occupant seats to help lower neck injury, airbags for head protection, and more cushioned dashboard structural designs to keep the possible of one impaling themselves or otherwise to a minimum. Then there came avoidance mechanisms to help drivers avoid accidents in the first place, or aide them after their crashes, such as improved steering systems. But this vehicular evolution wasn’t just constrained to safety and cosmetics, either.

Setting aside safety and cosmetics, cars have also shown a few other advancements. For one, there is now an improved ability to manage digital media while in a car. For example, some systems utilize touchscreen and voice recognition technology to get the job done. Also, some of these systems even link directly to mobile communications, so communication is not as much of a hassle. Finally, there was also the addition of GPS in some vehicular models. Also known as the Global Positioning System, this system allows users to better navigate while driving, so driving itself is not as much of a hassle. With all of these attributes (safety, cosmetics, and electronic technology) put in mind that they’re evolving, it may be asked by some: What possibilities could exist for each of these things in the foreseeable future?

Though I’m certainly no grease monkey, and am, in fact, just a teenager, I still think that I can intelligently point out a few of the things that will most likely happen with cars in the future. First off, it can be seen that cars are probably going to resemble, more and more, bits of moving “art”, as their general building style shifts towards a nature-like basis. Next, it is also pretty obvious that cars are going to become safer. Though I’m not saying that they will someday be able to save you from, say, a crash into boulder at 500 mph, I do much agree that vehicular safety will improve in other areas – mainly accident avoidance. Already there are cars out there that can stop themselves from crashing into other cars via the aide of computer technology. But these are a bit crude and, in my opinion, will be much improved. In fact, I presume that this sort of accident avoidance technology will eventually blossom into something we’ve probably all heard about – cars that drive themselves. How cool would that be? Anyways, as a side note, I would also like to inform you that cars will also probably become more digitally-oriented. Now here’s one more thing that I think cars will probably have in the relatively near future – not the ability to fly – but something else altogether. That “something else” that I’m talking about is better energy derision. Currently, cars are literally driven by gasoline, which bases its creation on materials that will soon become too exhausted for further gasoline production. Gasoline also has another problem: it theoretically can cause environmental upsurges, such as Global Warming. With those two things said, it is pretty obvious that cars need to be designed to stray away from using gasoline. To do this, I would recommend not anything of a fuel-like nature, including hydrogen fuel, as those modes of energy derision have proven to be a bit hectic, in my opinion. Wouldn’t it be a bit easier to derive energy from the sun instead, as it is a virtually inexhaustible source of energy, for the (long) time being? That, my friends, is what I think a future car should be like, at least for the next century. Who knows what else might come down the line later than that which might change the mindset for vehicular design.