What will be using 40 years in the future will petrol still exist?
Will diesel exist? is there enough oil to last till then?
Is Lpg the way forward?
Electric cars with the range of a large diesel with charging cappacity like that of a alternator?
I don't think we will advanced to flying around in space ships or living on pluto by then not a massive leap has happened upto now from 40 years back!
What do you think the future for the motor industry has for us?
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we will be using hydrogen fuel cells, and i will be dead.
Edited by Altea Ego on 14/12/2009 at 19:28
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And where will you get the vast amounts of electricity to produce the hydrogen? I say you, as I will be with AE.
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Sadly, it seems that the most significant leaps in technology are often a collateral fallout from conflict. WW1 and WW2 respectively engendered and encouraged the rapid development of technology and increased the willingness of the governments of the day to invest in research and development.
If we see a similar pressure on our society in the next 40 years it may well force innovations we can not yet imagine. If however, we are fortunate enough to enjoy some political and economic stability during that period the irony is that technology is more liable to evolve at a slower pace. While only commercial or non state funded investment is available we will only see developments which are driven by business plans with their necessary constraints.
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I think collateral fallout from WW3 may well kill any leaps in technology for the rest of mankind...
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A gradual move towards less social mobility and a village culture. Cars and private motoring will have been a blip known as the oil age and great sailing Clippers will be long distance transport.
Actually that`s in 400 years time....
Perhaps at some time we will be hunter gatherers again. As you sit here in the warm lounge, the senses arise. We evolved for it and the forest and the wolf - the deer, the lance and long bow will return. The skinning and meat roasting over a wood fire with the eternal roll of galaxies curling overhead in nights pitch black fever of expectation.
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Pass me another brontosaurus burger will you Ug?
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Ah I can picture it. The crackle of the fire, the smell of the deer roasting over it, the gentle rustling of the north wind in the pines, the melancholic cry of the wolves and...
Hark, I can hear the horn blowing as the longboats return from raiding the saxon shores..
DOOOOOO DAAAA doooooooo.
Edited by Altea Ego on 14/12/2009 at 19:42
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Oh yes AE, I can just picture Kirk Douglases dimpled chin as I type...
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Better get that Ray Mears boxed set.........
Edit - wonder if anyone's ever tried to do a GTi birch bark canoe. ? Could be an emerging niche...
Edited by Humph Backbridge on 14/12/2009 at 19:46
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>>and meat roasting over a wood fire>>
Wood? The rain forests are disappearing fast, we will go the same way as the Easter Island residents.
Edited by Old Navy on 14/12/2009 at 19:45
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Yeah, them stony faced old bu.....
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Who knows, if the car goes get some horse riding lessons. The folks around in 40 years may have a completely different lifestyle, working 'til they are 75 or longer jobs that you can walk to as you won't have wheels? Orwell tried 1984 and if he can't get it right how can we?
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I shall still be alive.........although I will be 104 and confined to a wicker bath chair, sitting in my gateway brandishing my walking stick, dribbling gently from every orifice and shouting foul oaths at the few passing cars
Well, everyone needs an interest in life.
You lot can do what you want !
Ted
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In 40 years, the automotive and oil conglomerates will have introduced the car powered by the Fleishmann-Pons cold fusion principle, which will be miraculously proven effective when oil stocks are almost depleted ;-)
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Why oh why does this myth persist about the oil companies hoarding some super new technology, that would render our dependence on oil obsolete.
Applying Occams razor.
If any oil company had such technology, they would be the first to implement it.
thus making an absolute fortune at their competitors expense.
Scheesh
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Applying Occams razor. If any oil company had such technology they would be the first to implement it. thus making an absolute fortune at their competitors expense.
And they will be the first to implement it. When all the easily recoverable oil has gone. Think about it, there's trillions of dollars worth of oil still left in the ground which can be relatively easily extracted, refined and sold, and which is only going up in value.
To introduce any "miracle" technology would render the oil fields and inventories these companies have spent billions finding, developing and drilling almost worthless, or as near as dammit. And that's without the political and global economic implications of a sudden shift away from oil.
Assuming such technology exists, and is being "sat on" by Big Oil, it would make little, if no sense at all to release it into the public domain now, for all manner of reasons. In the short term, the sudden dumping of something like cold fusion onto the world stage would cause absolute economic and political chaos, and would put millions of people across the world on the dole queue. Most of all though, it would wipe out trillions of dollars of guaranteed profits over the next 20-30 years. That scenario, to me, is no less plausible than mankind being genuinely stumped on this one.
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>Assuming such technology exists, and is being "sat on" by Big Oil
And here is where the great conspiricy theory falls flat on its bottom.
The idea that BigOil can be hiding, sitting on, preventing the development of, the huge technological advance that will make oil redundant, is not possible. Stuff like that couldnt be hidden. It would escape, they dont have a unique access to technological thought.
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Applying Occams razor. If any oil company had such technology they would be the first to implement it.
What's that got to do with Occam's razor ?
The simplest theory is that they would milk their present oil fields as fast as possible, and then introduce the new technology. Or sooner if their spies reported that a competitor was getting near to production.
If I'd just made a batch of Mark 1 Widgets and then discovered that the Mark 2s were even better, I'd flog the first batch PDQ before letting on about the second.
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If I'd just made a batch of Mark 1 Widgets and then discovered that the Mark 2s were even better I'd flog the first batch PDQ before letting on about the second.
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There must be several generations of any product, (cars for example), in the design, testing, production, distribution, and retail process. I cant see any manufacturer skipping a model and loosing the income from it unless it is a complete disaster. Do car dealers tell you there is a replacement model due when you go to buy a car? When I asked a dealer when the Mk 2 Ceed would be released a few months before it was due, he denied all knowledge of a new model, but offered me a big discount on the "old" model. Isn't the internet wonderful.
Edited by Old Navy on 15/12/2009 at 15:57
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It'll be molecular transportation for everybody and everything. There will be no other form of transport.
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The Microsoft molecular transportation system would eventually be fast and reliable, but would need to be on at least Service Pack 4 before I'd even go near it. The Apple one would look fantastic but cost ten times as much, and have a devoted following of iTransport bores who constantly go on about how fabulous it is. The Open Source one would be cheap and reliable once it worked, but would sap all your spare time getting it to a point where it could transport you ten yards, and then sometimes without your head, but people would love it all the same.
I can see it now. :-)
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you forgot those who would pirate their transportation system, never to be seen again when the keys were revoked mid transport.
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As a child, I always used to wonder when the "Star Trek" beam me up thing was being used, what would happen if one of them broke wind mid flight....be all over the shop I should think.....
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I assumed it would arrive in tact with the donor.
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The Microsoft molecular transportation system would eventually be fast and reliable,
But it would still be vulnerable to people diverting you to their shop and trying to persuade you to buy something or malicious hoaxers swopping your body parts around.
Edited by OG on 15/12/2009 at 14:08
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>>> The Microsoft molecular transportation system would eventually be fast and reliable, but would need to be on at least Service Pack 4 before I'd even go near it. <<<
"The MTS application has experienced a problem and needs to close. Would you like to report this fault?"
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To return your loved ones from the fourth dimension, please press Cntrl + Alt + Delete...
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Oil is likely to be scarce and expensive in 40 years' time, although I don't think it will have run out completely. I think cars will be electrically driven - pure electric for city cars, and for long distance use there will be electric / diesel range extender hybrids. The fuel of choice is likley to be diesel - a mix of mineral and biodiesel. Presumably petrol will be produced as a by-product of mineral oil refinement.
A significant proportion of electricity wil be from renewables - far offshore windfarms, solar photvoltaic and maybe the Severn Barrage - which alone could generate 7% of UK's electricity requirement.
But society will be forcing itself to use less energy, out of necessity.
I don't think we'll see hydrogen widely used as a fuel.
And what of global warming? I think it will turn out that we were reading too much into what turns out to be natural variation - but even if that's not the case, as fuel starts to run low, CO2 emissions will decline steeply anyway.
Edited by Sofa Spud on 15/12/2009 at 17:56
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This seems like a reasonable scenario to me
www.theoildrum.com/node/6041
Integrale
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I reckon in 40 years time there will be alot of cars that look remarkably like the present hoard...
there will be the 20th model change of the VW Golf that will still have thick rear pillars, a choice of only silver or bluey silver or greyish silver or white paint and blackish/greyish upolstery and people will still be talking about is it as good as the mark 1 or mark 6....there will have been umpteen editions of the Polo ...neither it nor the Golf will be available with a decent engine as VW will 40 years down the line still be suffering shortages of its warpdrive engine that is on a decade long waiting list and instead they will still be selling their cars with a 1.4 8v engine with 75 horsepower.
Citroen will still be doing VAT off deals.....
People on this forum will still be worrying about the electrics on a French or Italian car....
North London will still be full of sliver coloured mercedes driven by asian doctors...
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Overhead cables up the M1 and M6.......it worked for trolleybuses in town !
Difficult to overtake though....... so outside lane reserved for black Audis.
Ted
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