Thread: Cars in 2030

This article talks about what cars might look like in 2030. I'll most likely be around to see them - but they look impractical and pretty crap, all wheels and curves & futuristic - nothing practical.

I bet I know what the Defender would look like in 2030 - but someone with photoshop skills might have to draw it.

2030: A shape oddity

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

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I'm sorry to point this out but peak oil is real - and probably past. Our cars as we know now will probably still be around in very limited quantities but they will have very limited applications. Fuel will be **very** expensive by then. I'm not sure what will be the norm but I know consumptions will have to be well less than 5l/100.

Peak oil, assuming it is real*, applies only to conventional oil - unconventional supplies are certainly very low on the upward curve, and quantities are very large compared to conventional oil - but it will be expensive. There are a number of conventional cars on the market today doing better than 5l/100km, and we can expect to see more. But in my view, while electric cars are likely to become more common for city use, the problem with grid powered electric cars is that as oil gets more expensive so will electricity. I suspect that by 2030 there will be no major change in the cars we see, except for increasing use of electrics and generally more economical cars, although these changes will be driven mainly by emissions considerations rather than an oil shortage - reduction of carbon emissions is likely to constrain fuel economy and at the same time reduce oil demand and hence use.

* The problem with "peak oil" is twofold - firstly, reporting of volumes of oil being discovered and reserves held are notoriously unreliable both because of political or commercial manipulation of the numbers and because the size of reserves is genuinely almost impossible to determine until all the oil is produced, and secondly, because as soon as the price changes, so do the reserves - and as oil becomes more expensive, the recoverable reserves increase.

John