-- The car of 2020 will be made from aluminium, carbon fibre and thermoplastic. It will weigh only half the weight of present-day cars and will ride with the help of air suspension. Brakes will return energy to the storage battery as will solar panels on the roof. Body panels will be made from mass-dyed thermoplastics.

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It’s all too easy to visualise this sort of progress in the fast converging world of media, communication and information processing we’re so used to quantum leaps in the world of digi-tech. But the automobile lies basically unaltered or recognisable almost since the day it plopped out in the early part of the 20th century. We still use inefficient piston engines to convert chemical energy into tyre turning torque. Though overall performance, refinement and economy have progressed at a sometimes astonishing pace, we’re merely doing the same things better and better.

So what will the car that rolls down Mumbai’s Marine Drive or Delhi’s Janpath in 2020 be like? Very different that’s for sure, and completely unrecognisable under the hood.

DESIGN
Despite being over a century old, the automobile is still a highly inefficient user of energy. It’s not just the powerplant that’s to blame. Weight, aerodynamic drag and high levels of rolling resistance mean that the amount of power actually being utilised to propel the driver and passengers is extremely low. Automobiles today are much heavier in comparison to cars of the twenties. Come 2020 this will all change.

Just as we have emission norms today, the real challenge will be to make cars more and more efficient. For starters, there will be extremely high tax penalties if fuel economy norms and standards are not met, thus ruling out reasonably priced large-sized SUVs and MPVs.

The car of the future will shed a considerable amount of its bulk, with the majority of designs adhering to a three- seat format, as any reduction in weight will mean increased efficiency. By 2020, steel will be consigned to the history books as far as automobiles are concerned. It will be replaced either by new types of porous super-light and strong alloys of steel, or replaced altogether. And there is no dearth of materials vying for pole position.

While the monocoque, or integration of body and chassis into a single unit is extremely popular today, there are already signs that the much stiffer spaceframe (an unstressed body on a frame) may not be as hard to mass-produce as it was a couple of years ago. Fiat has already put a modern mass-produced spaceframe design into production, and it looks like it may be the way forward. Modern spaceframe designs need less investment per model and allow manufacturers to update their models more often. Extruded aluminum sections will form the bulk of the spaceframe’s components as advances in metallurgy will result in harder as well as more resistant alloys. Unstressed body panels means they can be manufactured from much lighter mass-dyed thermoplastic, which will also be scratch resistant. Colour-impregnated plastic panels will also reduce costs drastically as the paint shop is one of the largest investments in a car plant today. You will also be able to select and change colours at will, much like you can do with the Mercedes Smart today.

Carbon fibre will find extensive use in all forms of components. Currently the darling of Formula 1, this fibre-based material is less than half the weight of steel and much, much stronger. However, manufacturing and curing carbon fibre components in large numbers is at present an extremely long and arduous process that has not been successfully mass produced. Once production and cost-related issues are simplified, carbon fibre and its many variants will become the material of the future, with everything from suspension arms to full monocoques possible in the lightweight strong material. A hybrid body made from aluminium and carbon fibre sounds extremely promising.

Materials that constitute the glass area of the car will also change dramatically, as lighter and stronger polycarbonate will replace conventional glass. By 2020 the kerb weight of a typical economy segment car will not exceed half a tonne, despite being many times stiffer and safer than today.

Aerodynamic drag currently accounts for around a third of all power expended. The search for higher efficiency will see designers striving to achieve the lowest coefficient of drag possible, which will result in the introduction of aerodynamically efficient flat floors and skirted rear wheels. But don’t worry, you won’t have to change that flat - all tyres will be of the ‘run flat’ type by then. The rolling resistance of tyres will also be drastically reduced to help efficiency, but without affecting overall levels of grip too much.

All four wheels will be independently suspended, with pneumatic suspension systems and adaptive dampers, which can be altered to suit driving style and conditions. Wheel and suspension system location will be done with the help of carbon fibre or titanium links that will help reduce weight and thus momentum in the suspension. The adjustable ride height will be perfect for our conditions, especially broken surfaces, and it wouldn’t be wise to predict a major improvement in Indian roads, even over the next 20 years.

Rear wheel steering and four-wheel drive almost made their way into regular production cars in the ’80s, but the advantages just weren’t enough to justify the expense. Twenty years could change all that and you could have an identical set-up for the suspension, driveshaft, and steering at each end of the car. On the other hand, the extra weight of these components will increase the overall mass of the car, thus reducing efficiency.