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People have always wondered how things would be different in the future. The future of the car has been a popular topic of TV shows and cartoons for years. What form did you think transportation would take in the year 2010? Floating space speeders like on The Jetsons? Hovering craft like in Star Wars? The sky was the limit, literally, for what cars would look like. That isn’t the direction that technology has taken. 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. The police are busy trying to slow drivers down because our cars already go more than fast enough. 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. Auto makers tout the vehicles’ reliability and safety records, which has improved exponentially in recent years. So what do we need from our cars that we don’t have? Even more practicality, in the form of fuel efficiency. 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. None of these technologies is perfect yet, especially economically. Electric power is the one technology to successfully hit the car dealer’s showroom. 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 followed closely on their heels. The Ford Escape, Infiniti M35, Honda Civic and Nissan Altima are just a few of the offerings. 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. They’ve been out in very small numbers until now, seen at car shows or as part of a fleet of cars driven by the local electric company. Finally cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt are hitting showrooms. Limited range and battery price are not completely resolved yet, but clearly this is the direction that new cars are going. 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. Look at the non-hybrid version of the Honda Civic, which gets 34 MPG or the Ford Focus with its 35 MPG highway. This was unimaginable back in the 80’s when gas was only $1.35 a gallon and we loved our V8s. 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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