New Cars - New Technology
Exciting Future Of Automobiles
New technologies will improve fuel efficiency, increase safety,
aid navigation and repair.
Bend Bohn, of the German auto components company, Robert Bosch
Corporation, recently predicted that internal combustion engines
will continue to dominate the automotive market well into the
21st Century. Automotive manufacturers have invested
considerable time and effort in attempt to improve fuel
efficiency in these engines, and they have been successful. In
fact the U.S.A. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), estimates
engines have become 30 percent more fuel-efficient over the past
15 years than previously. However the gains have been offset by
the introduction of increasingly bigger and more powerful
engines. The average engine in the present industry is 63
percent more powerful than 20 years ago.
John Heywood, Director of the Sloan Automotive Laboratory at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, estimates new technology
will reduce fuel consumption by a third by 2020 and a half by
2030. Gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles and modern diesel
engines are significantly more fuel efficient than their
gasoline counterparts, but new technology in gasoline engines is
also expected to reduce fuel consumption.
Next year, General Motors will begin introducing