5 future car technologies that will be commonplace within a decade

5 future car technologies that will be commonplace within a decade

What would be mainstream in the motoring industry in the next couple of years?

Predictions are, by definition, hit or miss. And, if commentators from the 1950s were anything to go by, mostly miss – otherwise, we would all be zipping around in flying cars today. To avoid the same embarrassment, The Peak eschews blind optimism and scours laboratories for promising, nascent technologies, to make educated guesses on what would disrupt the automotive mainstream within 10 years. Here is what we found.

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05: BOLT FROM THE BLUE

It is rather surprising to note that the electrical supply in cars has not changed much since the ’50s. Running on 12 volts, a car’s capabilities are being stretched thin by the hefty requirements of today’s cutting-edge gizmos. Enter the 48V system. The Volkswagen Group, for example, has installed this beefier supply of juice in its Audi SQ7, in order to spool up a supercharger within 30 microseconds to decimate turbo lag. The Bentley Bentayga deploys a similar setup to drive an anti-roll bar that reacts to the terrain for better handling on- and off -road. Carmakers are even thinking of using the technology to create “mild hybrids”. Honda, for example, has fitted it on a prototype diesel-powered Civic to smooth out power delivery. The company estimates that 48V electrics bring two thirds of the benefits of a full hybrid – lower fuel consumption and better performance – at one third the cost.

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