As the Earth Summit was getting into gear last month in Rio de Janeiro, around 600 of the world’s car researchers were meeting in Florence to discuss the future of motor transport. But what emerged from the International Symposium on Automotive Technology and Automation was a confused view of tomorrow’s car. Should the motor industry discard the internal combustion engine once and for all, or keep the engine but change the fuel? Some delegates proposed abandoning the car altogether; others that the industry should continue with business as usual.
Those who questioned whether the car had a future – participants from the US and Scandinavia in the main – did so with such fervour that Terry Morgan, marketing director for Land Rover, was prompted to comment: ‘I thought for a moment I had gone to the wrong conference.’ For another participant, the car’s future was entirely a question of politics. He argued that the goal should be for everyone to have absolute freedom to drive wherever they want.
California’s tough emission laws remain the most immediate challenge to the car. They already ensure that new cars in the state emit about one-tenth of the main pollutants – carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen – that they did in the 1960s. As a result of the standards introduced during the 1970s, catalytic converters and electronic fuel injection systems have become common. Catalytic converters remove pollutants from exhaust gases before they leave the car and electronic fuel injection reduces the volume of pollutants by making combustion more efficient. Europe and the rest of the US followed suit. Now most new cars in the Western world must have catalytic…
