Gadgetory

I'm flying Cooley from CNET on cars with my top five list of major automotive engineering trends these are big long-term trends in the industry that I think will fundamentally change the kind of car you drive tomorrow let's get started with number five and here I'm gonna start off in the cellar admittedly with electrification of cars now I'm going to enrage a lot of greenies here I know but know that I do really like electric cars I just think they're the smallest of these five trends because they remain a sliver of automotive sales that's a given and we don't yet have vision into a major breakthrough in battery tech that will get people over the hurdles the average driver now that they have about buying an e V which is charged time and range of course Tesla Model S Nissan Leaf Chevy Volt these have all been home runs within evie parameters once we get a major breakthrough in battery or maybe soaring gas prices again one day the whole market may change for the bigger number four is an old chestnut it's the internal combustion engine now you're probably thinking what is new about that just about everything go back a few years and the hue and cry was oh the combustion engine is sunsetting we had soaring gas prices we had the arrival of electric cars we had governments willing to throw money at anything with a battery in it but then guess what happened internal combustion engine got massively high tech turbos direct injection computerized valve trains four cylinders instead of six or even eight cylinder deactivation auto start-stop high compression ratios Atkinson cycle layouts and I'm leaving a few out we've got so many hot new technologies in the combustion engine it's gonna keep firing on all cylinders for quite a while number three you already know in your bones its connectivity your car is becoming a mobile connected digital device as well as a transportation platform whether it's 4G and Google services phone interfaces like carplay and android auto your favorite streaming services built-in - by the factory or an obd donggil under the - connectivity is enabling things in your car that range from infotainment to remote access to new ways of ride and car sharing and new ways of rating pricing and delivering insurance this is the big future of how your car is the latest data probe in your life and if that makes you queasy you can always Drive a 67 like I do number 2 is a big one a mega trend this is going to be autonomy adaptive driving systems now partial autonomy in the future and substantial self-driving not that many years out nothing out there will so impact the number of fatalities the number of injuries the logic of how we use our cars and even the layout and shape of our cities and suburbs as this one will it's also the one that most divides driver opinions makes Republicans and Democrats look like they're in love with each other my number one automotive engineering trend for today and many ears out might surprise you it's taking out weight now that used to mean back in the day just buying a smaller car not a palatable choice to most people now it means the use of amazing new materials aluminum carbon fiber low weight high strength steel using CAD design to make structures that weigh less do more and are stronger at the same time when a car is lighter it gets better mpg as a result spews fewer emissions accelerates faster breaks more quickly corners more effortlessly and puts less wear on its own parts like shocks and brakes and tires this is the holy grail with every automotive engineer I talk to less car is more and we're in a golden era of really making a difference there