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I'm Brian Cooley from CNET on Cars with my top five list of major automotive engineering trends.
These are big, long-term trends in the industry that I think will fundamentally change the kinda car you drive.
Tomorrow, let's get started with number five.
And here I'm gonna start off in the cellar admittedly with electrification of cars.
Now I'm gonna enrage a lot of greenies here I know, but know that I do really like electric Electric cars.
I just think there's a smallest of these five trends because they remain a sliver of automotive sales, that's a given, and we don't yet have vision into a major breakthrough in battery tech that will get people over the hurdle The average driver now, that they have about buying an EV.
Which is charge time and range, of course.
Tesla Modes S, Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, these have all been home runs within EV parameters.
Once we get a major breakthrough in battery, or maybe soaring gas prices again one day, The whole market may change for the bigger.
Number four is an old chestnut.
It's the internal combustion engine.
You're probably thinking what is new about that?
Just about everything.
Go back a few years and the [INAUDIBLE] cry was the combustion engine is sunsetting We had soaring gas prices.
We had the arrival of electric cars.
We had governments wanting to throw money at anything with a battery in it.
But then guess what happened?
The internal combustion engine got massively high tech.
Turbos, direct injection, computerized valve trains, four cylinders instead of six or even eight, cylinder deactivation, auto start/stop, high compression ratios, Atkinson cycle layout, And I'm leaving a few out.
We've got so many hot new technologies in the combustion engine, it's gonna keep firing on all cylinders for quite a while.
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Number three you already know in your bones.
It's connectivity.
Connectivity.
Your car is becoming a mobile connected digital device as well as a transportation platform.
Whether it's 4G and Google services, phone interfaces like CarPlay and Android Auto, your favorite streaming services, built in dash by the factory, or an [UNKNOWN] The dash.
Connectivity is enabling things in your car that range from infotainment, to remote access, to new ways of ride and car sharing, and new ways of rating, pricing and delivering insurance.
This is the big future of how Now your car is the latest data probe in your life.
And if that makes you queasy, you can always drive a 67 like I do.
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Number two is a big one.
A megatrend, this is going to be autonomy.
Adaptive driving systems now Partial autonomy in the future and substantial self-driving not that many years out.
Nothing out there will so impact the number of fatalities, the number of injuries, the logic of how we use our cars, and even the layout and shape of our cities and suburbs as this one will.
It's also the one that most divides Driver opinions makes Republicans and Democrats look like there in love with each other.
My number one automotive engineering trend for today and many years out might surprise you.
It's taking out weight.
Now that used to mean back in the day buying a smaller car.
Not a palatable choice to some people.
Now it means the use of an amazing new material aluminum.
Carbon fibre.
Low weight, high strength steel.
Using tag design to make structures that weigh less, do more, and are stronger at the same time.
When a car is lighter it gets better MPG.
As a result, spews fewer emissions.
Accelerates faster, brakes more quickly, corners more effortlessly, and puts less wear on its own parts like shocks, and brakes, and tires.
This is the holy grail with every automotive engineer I talk to.
Less car is more.
And we're in a golden era of really making a difference there.
