car 2022 - 2022 cars

Your Car 2022

The automobile has been on the verge of being reinvented practically since it was invented. Cars that would float and fly, cars that would walk, cars that would cruise like bubble-shaped VIP lounges: Surely a brand-new car was right around the corner, or at least a couple of years away. Problem was, the irreducible requirements of engine, transmission, suspension, and fuel tank, and all the mechanical linkages involved (pedal to throttle, driveshaft to wheels), dictated much about not only how a car would function, but how it would look.

Finally, however, more than a century after cars appeared, two things make possible a radical liberation from the dictates of traditional car design: drive-by-wire, and power from fuel cells. These technologies are not fully realized, but the huge opportunities they present are beginning to inform automakers' plans.

General Motors appears to be in the lead, or at least is the most vocal about its approach to the reinvention of the car. At the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January, GM unveiled a concept vehicle called the Autonomy. The Autonomy isn't a car in the traditional sense; it's a souped-up, futuristic 15-foot-long skateboard, a four-wheeled platform containing motor, fuel, steering, brakes. A body—any kind of body—can be snapped onto this rolling chassis. At the Detroit show, GM topped the Autonomy with a two-seat coupe. Later this year, when the company rolls out a driveable version, it will fasten the Autonomy to a sedan body.

Within GM's giant skateboard, the mechanical parts that normally control the steering, brakes, shifter, and throttle have been supplanted by computer-controlled electronic circuitry. Gone are the transmission and driveshaft and their encroachments on the interior. Perhaps most important, the internal combustion engine is replaced by a compact fuel cell, sending power to individual electric motors at each wheel. The catalytic converter is removed, of course, as well as the tailpipe, because fuel cells emit only water vapor and heat.

By stuffing all the functional parts into the vehicle's structural floor, GM has handed automotive designers a blank computer screen from the skateboard on up. Suddenly they are free to conceive of cars without an engine compartment, fixed instrument panel, floor pedals, or even a standard steering wheel. They have a flat floor to work with, making it possible to create interiors that double as living and working spaces. The possibilities at first induced a kind of culture shock. "For a time, our designers had the artistic equivalent of writer's block," recalls Wayne Cherry, GM's vice president of design. "We had always worked with some boundaries."

Skeptics call the Autonomy pie in the sky because it depends on major technological breakthroughs that have yet to materialize. The chassis, to begin with: In order for it to be lightweight and not encroach on passenger space, GM engineers think it should be only 6 inches thick.

But fuel cells and storage containers for the hydrogen they run on are still too bulky, as are the computer controls for drive-by-wire systems. The working prototype of the Autonomy that will be unveiled later this year will be about 11 inches thick, almost twice the desired dimension. Still, engineers at GM and elsewhere are confident that work is advancing quickly enough that within 20 years the roads will be filled with radically redesigned cars like the Autonomy. Those cars will be produced by a completely altered auto industry, in which traditional engine building will wane and new technology suppliers will rise. In developing the Autonomy, GM turned not only to traditional automotive suppliers, but also to a company that specializes in electrical generation for submarines and another with expertise in hydrogen storage tanks.

GM has competition in the race to reinvent. Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Honda, and Toyota are also developing drive-by-wire and fuel cell systems. And though they have not articulated a vision as specific as GM's Autonomy, they, too, see radical change ahead. "By the time the current generation of young designers retire, they quite possibly could see the last of the internal combustion engine," says Ed Golden, executive director of Ford's North American design operations. "They will probably create vehicles that are more significant and different than anything current designers like me will do in our careers."

What makes the Autonomy approach so intriguing is that it would allow drivers to own several car bodies for just one skateboard, then alter the layout and look of their vehicles according to the dictates of lifestyle or mood. (A reality that would also transform the marketplace: Would a GM skateboard accept only GM bodies, or also third-party hardware? GM envisions the skateboard forming the platform not just for a few car models, but for dozens of models globally, changing the economics of production.) Each body would snap on to the Autonomy base, and its interior technology—controls, power, heating, and cooling—would connect to the chassis through a docking port on the platform. A family might own a commuter sedan body and a sport or SUV body for weekends or vacations, then buy a specially configured body so that, for example, a newly disabled family member could roll a wheelchair directly into the driving position. A notion like this has implications for another great American institution, the two-car garage—or perhaps the bodies would be stored at depots for quick installation. Within a given car body there would also be flexibility: Passenger and even driver seat positions could be moved; a car could be turned into a mobile office, even a mobile bedroom. Some of this seems fanciful, but when you clear the decks above the skateboard, the possibilities are astounding.

Before unveiling the Autonomy, GM held an internal contest to see what kinds of attachable auto bodies its designers could come up with. We decided to take a similar route, asking two independent design firms to brainstorm new configurations for the car of the future, based on the Autonomy concept. We encouraged the firms not only to play with interior configurations, but to fundamentally alter the architecture of the automobile, creating vehicles that are not only innovative but functional. Prisma Design International of Tustin, California, responded with a novel SUV and adjustable-bed pickup; Aria-Group of Irvine, California, conceived a snap-on sports car and a sedan.

Designers are buzzing about the potential versatility of the Autonomy—especially when it comes to interiors. "The task of driving is different at different points in the day or in one's life," says Jaron Rothkop, a senior industrial designer at Lear Corp., an automotive interiors supplier. The Autonomy yields a car that can evolve to a much more profound degree than aftermarket add-ons have ever made possible.

Drive-by-wire technology, meanwhile, would enable the steering wheel to become an aircraft-type control yoke or a joystick, if that were desired by some drivers. Whatever the device, it would not need to be attached to a conventional steering column and could, potentially, be docked in several places about the car. John Phillips, director of industrial design and advanced product development at Lear, suggests it could be pulled down from the ceiling when required and hidden away (a security plus) when the car was stationary and doubling as a living or working space. When traveling alone, the driver could sit in the center of the vehicle, for increased safety in case of a collision; side- or rear-view cameras would provide a full range of vision. A British motorist who drove frequently to France on business could shift his position from right to left and back again. The absence of an engine compartment, meanwhile, could make cars safer, with new room for crash-absorbing material in front of the driver.

There is work to be done, of course, before the skateboard is ready for prime time. That work starts with the fuel cell. Fuel cells have come a long way since 1994, when Daimler-Benz unveiled a van whose fuel cell stacks and hydrogen tanks were so large they consumed the majority of the space inside. Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, Honda, and most of the other big carmakers either have experimental fuel cell vehicles on the road, or will have them there soon. But no fuel-storage system as compact as that required by the skateboard is in view; if the skateboard is 6 inches thick, the tanks will have to be mere inches high. Liquid hydrogen requires thick, insulated tanks that can maintain the fuel at 253° C below zero. Compressed hydrogen requires even more bulky, highly stressed tanks. One alternative is to store hydrogen in a solid medium, a kind of metal sponge, with the fuel chemically bonded to the metal and released when warmed by waste heat from the fuel cells. Chemical storage would be the safest approach, but current metal sponges cannot hold enough hydrogen to fulfill a vehicle's energy needs.

"The fuel cell group within General Motors is comfortable with the Autonomy's skateboard concept," says Chris Borroni-Bird, who is in charge of design and technology fusion at GM and led development of the Autonomy. "We're looking at four or five approaches to hydrogen storage. We don't want to close the door on any approach."

Drive-by-wire technology might seem less of a hurdle than the fuel cell challenge. Fly-by-wire is standard in big jets, and in cars, limited by-wire systems—controlling throttle, suspension settings, and some braking equipment—can be found already in BMW's new 7 Series, the Mercedes SL500, the latest GM pickups, and the Chevrolet Corvette. But the Autonomy strategy is vastly more ambitious, a full-system, by-wire network of computers and electronic motors that would require redundancy systems to prevent, say, a full system failure in the event of electrical outage. Back-up solutions include secondary batteries, multiple computer systems, and independent brake systems for each wheel. But for a universal, global platform like the Autonomy, all this needs to be accomplished at less-than-Mercedes—let alone less-than-Airbus—prices.

There are other problems relating to fit. The electric wheel motors, for example, will be integrated into the wheel hubs. They have to be powerful enough to provide 15 to 20 kilowatts of force, yet small and lightweight enough that the suspension system can keep the wheels firmly in touch with the road as they pass over bumps. Another obstacle: fabricating auto bodies that are structurally sound, won't come apart or off during a collision, yet can be easily snapped on to the skateboard.

The engineers have a lot to do, but designers are simply having fun with the skateboard's potential. Prisma Design International, one of the two firms hired by Popular Science, has imagined a pickup truck in which the driver's seat swivels 180 degrees while the steering wheel is unplugged and repositioned, so the driver can look forward when steering a load through a tight spot in reverse. The truck design also features a bed and cab that can compress while the other expands; essentially, an adjustable cab-to-bed ratio in one vehicle. Prisma also designed an SUV that takes advantage of the sheer volume that results from pushing the engine to the bottom; it includes an entertainment console/cooler/table that slides to the rear when not needed. The windshield of the sedan designed by Aria-Group extends practically to the vehicle's bumper level—a neat trick made possible by the absence of an engine compartment. The seats fold down into beds that lie flat on the car's driveshaft-free floor. In Aria's go-kart-like sports car, pop-off storage containers in the front, where the engine would normally be, give a two-seater the trunk capacity of a sedan (at 15 feet, it is about the length of an old Jaguar E-Type: Imagine the carrying capacity).

Predicting the future of the car has always been a dangerous business. In addition to the lounge car from 1940—not entirely unlike Prisma's SUV, by the way—classic covers of this magazine included a car that moved on spheres instead of wheels, a car on skis, and a two-wheeled car on giant hoops. The difference now is that major technological advances are at hand. When cars are free of the engines and many of the mechanical systems that govern their current configuration, that configuration will inevitably fall away, as happened with the first horseless buggies. The Autonomy may die, but the idea behind it will not: If technology proceeds as it should, the car in 20 years will surely be very different from your father's Oldsmobile.