Counting Down The Top 5 Future Car Technologies

As technology advances, more and more innovations are being placed before us. This is true in all aspects of life, including industries involved in safety, leisure, and utility. In the automotive world, new car tech is often integrated as a way of making the car safer. Recent automotive innovations could truly change the future of driving and assist the automotive industry.

Here is a top 5 countdown of the most exciting prospects in new car technology.

5. Cars that Communicate With Other Cars

Have you ever wished that you could see dangerous hazards before driving over them? Maybe you wish that you could know about congested traffic or accidents before choosing your route. That could soon be possible if manufacturers continues to develop V2V (vehicle to vehicle) Communication. This tech could allow cars on the road to send out signals about their speed, direction, location, and potential hazards to other cars, preventing accidents or collisions.

4. Autonomous Cars

While a self-driving car may seem like something you would only see in science fiction, it is fast becoming a reality. There are already several systems that allow cars to park themselves, so perhaps completely autonomous driving is around the next technological corner.

Google has already been using self-driven cars to drive roads in California and Nevada as the website compiles its huge maps database. In these cases, the cars learn a route by being driven on it by a human, and then it can drive solo, with no human help.

3. Virtual Reality Dashboards

Also inspired by science fiction and big-budget blockbuster films is the concept of an augmented display. This new technology would scan the surroundings of a car and then be able to display information about different objects and locations on the windshield or dash.

This type of display could also be used to highlight the lane you should be driving in, warn you if you are going to collide with another car, or give you heads-up driving directions.

2. Exterior Airbags

Exterior airbags is a technology that may be much closer to reality than an augmented dashboard. Mercedes is currently working on airbags that will perform an active role in mitigating the damage from an inevitable collision. They are designing airbags that deploy underneath the car, raising the car about 8 centimeters, and double the braking power of the car. This would decrease the time and space needed to completely stop, making an unavoidable crash much safer for passengers.

1. Batteries in Body Panels

According to Exxon Mobil, the time will soon come when half of all new production cars are hybrids. This means that manufacturers need to find better ways of creating lighter and better batteries. European automotive leaders are already researching ways to save room and weight by creating energy-storing bodywork.

The material used to make these new body panels would be much lighter than current battery options, and they could reduce a car’s weight by as much as 15%. They would work much like batteries, storing the energy produced by the systems in the car, and then providing energy when the car needs it.

Toyota is researching how to add a solar energy solution to the energy storing body panel’s idea. Their lightweight body panels hope to convert solar energy directly to electricity. These new innovations will hopefully make hybrids cars lighter and more energy efficient.