I see on Discovery now and then what the future of cars will bring, but I’ve been seeing them for years and the only changes in cars I see are gadgets (like voice activated phones, and auto start). Seems like cars by now (with 100 years of studying technology) could be and should be smaller, lighter, and much more efficient in accordance with energy/miles/speed. What is holding it back?
Oh, and cheaper, too. They should be getting cheaper and cheaper.
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Very thoughtful question. I think my top answer would be that the laws of physics governing the performance of automobiles haven’t relented to technological progress the way the laws of physics of semiconductors have.
Have you heard of Moore’s Law? It’s the notion that, since the advent of the integrated circuit, the number of transistors (roughly equivalent to the processing power provided by the circuit) doubles about every 20 months.
Each time the semiconductor industry gets to a hurdle that might interrupt Moore’s Law (feature size, signal propagation speed/coherence, power dissipation, etc.) some technological breakthrough occurs that makes the next generation of chips be more powerful while still economically viable to produce.
In terms of demand, I would guess that the number of computer chips produced world-wide in a year is maybe 1000 times the number of automobiles produced. Remember that nowadays, toasters and vacuum cleaners have processors in them. So the demand for chips is not only greater than for automobiles, it is growing at a much faster pace.
What’s different about building a car than it was 100 years ago? Mass is still subject to the pull of gravity (and safety concerns have led us to build more massive cars than ever before); surface area is still resistant to the wind exponentially; friction between surfaces still generates heat that is wasted energy. We haven’t had the kind of breakthroughs in overcoming these inefficiencies that we’ve had in semiconductors.