For years, we’ve been told that the classic car with a gasoline engine, completely controlled by a human driver and a steering wheel is yesterday’s technology.
I get that. I know we are supposed to be thinking about electric or alternative fuel cars and hybrids, or better yet mass transit. But why then is the hottest thing at the current North America International Auto Show a super-powered Shelby GT Ford Mustang which apparently was made to be driven at speeds over 100 miles an hour and which has, one adoring critic wrote, exhaust pipes whose openings are the size of paint cans?
Ah, yes. Our minds say kale salad; our hearts say hamburgers and fries. The traditional automobile is far from dead yet. Now, I have to watch myself when I make such announcements, because I am anything but an early adopter. There are advantages to that. I never bought a Sony Betamax or any type of eight-track tape player, for example.
But sooner or later, things do change. Often not completely, and not in the precise direction the prophets foretold. Vinyl records haven’t completely disappeared.
Floppy discs are gone, as are music cassettes. But there are still newspapers, and the kindle never did catch up to, let alone replace, the printed book.
Nor has the electric car lived up to the promise it seemed to have. For decades, we were told that science was on the point of a breakthrough that would give us an electric car battery that would last for many hundreds if not thousands of miles. That hasn’t happened.
There have been incremental improvements. But cars powered by electricity still don’t have enough range to make them truly practical. The great inventor Stan Ovshinsky, father of the nickel-metal-hydride battery that powers your laptop, was a firm believer for years in electric cars. But shortly before he died, he told me they were only a transitional stage.
Not only did the battery not last long enough, having an electric car whose battery was recharged by burning fossil fuel didn’t seem to him to be much of an advance.
He thought hydrogen powered cars would be the true future. He predicted that the Chevy Volt would be quietly canceled in a few years, which is indeed what happened.
If you think the idea of cars powered by hydrogen is crazy, you can join those critics who made fun of Ovshinsky back in 1960, when he said televisions would someday have a flat screen and that you would be able to hang them on the wall.
What we do know, as Dave Cole has been saying, is that there is more uncertainty in about every aspect of the auto industry than there has ever been. Who thought they’d ever see a world where General Motors sold more cars in China than the United States?
Ford Motor Company could have had Volkswagen for nothing after World War II, but declined because they thought it was worthless. This week, Ford was happy to announce a partnership with VW to produce some commercial vehicles. For some of us old-timers, it is still hard to believe that Pontiac is gone, but Hyundai is still going strong.
I know the automotive world will look very different, very soon. We may see a world without sedans, though somehow I doubt it. But I don’t think we will see the complete demise of the gasoline fueled vehicle for some time to come.
Then again … I could be wrong.
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