Daniel Sperling

In September 1993 President Bill Clinton and chief executive officers of Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors created the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV). Their primary goal was to develop a vehicle with up to three times the fuel economy of midsize 1993 US cars (about eighty mpg) with no sacrifice in performance, size, cost, emissions, or safety. Billions of dollars were to be spent over ten years, split roughly fifty-fifty between government and industry. They planned to select the most promising technologies by 1997, to build a concept prototype by 2000, and to have a production prototype by 2004. The program has adhered to that schedule.

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Steven E. Shladover

Even when cars were still young, futurists began thinking about vehicles that could drive themselves, without human help. Perhaps the best known of these conjectures was the General Motors Futurama, the hit of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. During the following decades interest in automated vehicles rose and fell several times. Now, at the start of the new century, it’s worth taking a fresh look at this concept and asking how automation might change transportation and the quality of our lives.

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Timothy Lipman

Automobiles are often criticized for consuming so much petroleum. While much has been done in the past twenty years to make vehicles pollute less, the growing popularity of larger vehicles is making vehicles consume more energy. However, emerging technologies suggest that new generations of vehicles can be built that will be much more efficient than those on the roads today. Furthermore, the prospect of future vehicles incorporating electric drive systems means they may be able to integrate with the electricity grid in a novel way: they may be able to supply electricity to the grid, thereby eliminating the need to build new power plants in some areas.

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