Which will be the futures car?

f.) Nuclear car.

Combo electric/biofuel....at least in the short to medium term.

I think in the short to medium term diesel and diesel hybrids will be the solution. Diesel has gotten to the point where pollution from it is at about the same levels as regular gas, but is almost twice as efficient in new engines. Europe already uses a lot of diesel, and it's starting to get a foothold in the US market. In the long term, electric cars of some sort - whether hydrogen fuel cells or battery powered depends on which technology wins the popularity and quality race. 

Taking a look at what the car manufacturers are doing, they are all designing new engines that are a lot small than what we are used to. Volkswagen now has a 1.4l diesel providing 160 HP. FIAT is working on the return on the 2-cylinder petrol engine, their new 0.9l SGE engine will provide 110 HP, more than enough for small cars and perfect to combine with an electric engines for larger hybrid cars.

Hybrids will not be for Joe Average yet, they require a lot of components, which makes it only viable for larger, more expensive cars.

Electric, Hydrogen and other things won't appear in the showroom for the time being. So we'll be driving more efficient conventional cars and hybrids, and use increasingly more biofuels for them.

Hey now!  That's the one I've been working on!  The prototype's in my garage and everything!

Okay, so I don't have a garage, but the point is still valid.

The car that runs on 'oilgae'.

I see some sort of Fusion car engine. One which will provide electricity.

The only way to go is an engine that does not combust. Meaning anyting that uses fuel will eventually run out of it. The planet is already on it's last mile. Using biofuels will tax the food chain to much. Hydrogene is the most available product in the universe. I think it's our best bet.

I pump my car up with a bicycle tire pump

Nuclear cars will become the norm, and will pretty much dominate every other variety by around 2077.

I really hope you are joking

*enter nerdrage*

Okay, here is why we will NEVER use nuclear power for transportation.

1: Nuclear Energy is NOT clean, it may not produce carbon monoxide or dioxide, are other harmful substances, but nuclear power runs of a core of a radiactive metal (usually uranium 238 I believe). And the core gets extremely hot, so how does it cool itself?  Well none other than water. The water that is used to cool the reactor becomes irradiated.

Irradiated water is extremely toxic (more than the pollutants caused from hydrocarbons)

2: What would happen if a car wreck occured? Their is the small potential for a nuclear reaction (ei: nuclear bomb) Although it would take some extreme cases that could probably be easily engineered around, it is still a liability.  I would rather live in a world with melted snowcaps than a world with nuclear fallout.

3: Nuclear energy is expensive. The amount of safety and precautions that would have to be taken to make it safe for vehicle use is way different than its counterparts stuck safely in a reactor chamber in a nuclear plant.

4: Cars would become way heavier with the need to create the reactor. The main reason is because you would either need a thick layer of lead or concrete or some other dense material to prevent the deadly radiation from escaping the chamber

5: Its a HUGE liability trusting everyone with a stick of radioactive metal.  Terrorists would have easy access to nuclear weapons from simply chopshopping a car and taking out the core and then packing it into a bomb shell with some other stuff.

*/end nerdrage*

I think the new source of fuel for our future cars will probably a breakthrough with either solar energy or a hydrogen-based energy source. I read something a while back out solar energy and how they have pathetic efficiency and with a breakthrough in the technology we could easily power the entire planet from solar power.

In the meantime before either of those happen, I'm guessing biodiesel.  I don't like it one bit, but I think it's the most likely. And your probably thinking, "Why don't you like biodiesel? It's a renewable source and way cleaner than fossil fuels!" Because biodiesel is made from foods that humans commonly consume, if we began a large scale production of biodiesel food prices would soar, unless we created hundreds of millions of acres of farmland devoted to the production of biodiesel.

That's my two-cents

  Man you would scared out of your mind to read about this then.  http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/

Everything Fendryx said. But on the off-chance you meant fusion, rather than fission, you still have most of the problems Fendryx outlined. For one, one of the ingredients fo nuclear fusion is still radioactive (tritium - and it is very light, hard to contain, and extremely dangerous of inhaled or consumed). Having your average joe handling this stuff would be a horrible idea. You also still need heavy radiation shielding because even though none of the products of fusion are radioactive, the reaction itself produces lots of neutron radiation. There's no chance whatsoever of a nuclear explosion upon collision of two fusion-powered cars, but the possibility of radioactive fuel leakage is rather unpleasant.

Really, the only risk Fendryx stated that doesn't really apply is the whole terrorist angle. Although theoretically, if tritium were to become readily available to your average person they might be able to contaminate water sources or something.

By 2077, if we haven't destroyed our civilization already I think it's far more likely that cars will be completely electrically powered, but most power plants will be fusion plants by then that the cars will essentially be nuclear powered, just indirectly.

2077 is a reference to Fallout, he was kidding.

Well the nuclear car is not a good idea. It sounds like I'm driving a nuclear bomb in the city!!  

Bikes.

What are you talking about?  The Ford Nucleon was a great idea!

Awesome.

If you're going to nerdrage, do it properly. You meant U-235.

U-238 *can* be used in a fission reaction, but only in extreme high-energy reactions, like the third stage of a thermonuclear bomb. It literally takes a fusion bomb to make enough energy to destabilize U-238.

e.) Car which works with air . Uses compresor to absorb air.

Biofuel will never work(we make it from food and most of the world is starving),

The only efficent way to make hydrogent is to burn fuel,

 unless battery technology skyrockets no electricity,

and solar pannels on a car is the Stupidest thing I ever heard.

So I have to say with our current technology Compresed air is the way to go, the only problem is it does not have a huge amout of power so offroad driving, semi trucks, or trains would have to run on something else.

*Current* biofuels use food crops as feedstock. Most of the research going into the field right now is going into developing processes that use ag wastes or other non-food sources. Algae and switchgrass are common targets.

You are somewhat correct about hydrogen. It's an energy storage medium, not a fuel source. But it can be generated using hydro, wind, nuclear, or solar power, so it's far preferable to current fuels.

Storing electricity in batteries is far more efficient than generating hydrogen from it and burning it again. The only area where Hydrogen IMO makes sense is situations where you need to put a lot of energy in a small space. This could be a way to make aircraft more climate friendly.

For cars, less weight is an advantage too, but I don't think it will be large enough to outweigh the higher energy efficiency of batteries.

That's a common misconception (not that most of the world is starving, that's completely true). The problem isn't that we don't produce enough food; the problem is one of transportation. We don't have the means (or the political desire) to efficiently transport and distribute all the excess food that we currently let rot in warehouses to the places and people who need it. Now, talking about just the US market (because that's what I know) it's true that using corn, for example, for fuel does indeed raise the price of corn (and thus of almost every other food product, most of which contain plenty of corn-derived products) - but reduce or get rid of government subsidies and that problem is solved.

It is true that you can make biofuels from food products.  But it's not a requirement (unless you consider algae a food product in common use).  I suppose that's why I see a growing base of support for 'oilgae', posted above in reply #6.

Producing fuels from algae will be the ultimate bio-fuel because algae are amongst the organisms that turn CO2 into biosmass fastest, they are considered 3th generation bio-fuels. Algae can be used to produce petrol style fuels, kerosine like fuels and diesel like fuels, so there is a lot to like about them. However, 3th generation biofuels aren't ready to become available yet.

What will become available very soon (1-2 years) is ethanol from cellulose. This second generation biofuel has the advantage that we can i.e. use the corn for food, but the rest of the plant, which is normally waste, for fuel. This both removes the price competition with food, as well as decreases the amount energy needed to produce the ethanol. A problem is that this is no solution for diesel engines, bio-diesel will for now stay mostly first generation.

Actualy a hydrogen fuels can just be as efficient as a li-ion battery, if made right they just as good, plus the hydrogen requied in the fuel can be made in several ways, one using electricity from clean sources such as solar, wind, and nuclear, or algae, while growing they have an output of hydrogen.

The main side affect of battery cell is that you eventual you have to replace them, which means you have to 100% efficient and clean on recycling.

Where as a hydrogen fuel cell have very little maintence, meaning less replacement, under ideal conditions its 99.999% efficient meaning one minute of down time in two years

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are supposed to enter public market this year.   I want to say by Honda and Toyoda, but don't quote me on that.