Автомобили

1.

Cars

“Car” is the most universal term for a street-legal vehicle with four wheels. Cars are more specifically broken down further into coupes, sedans, and station wagons or hatchbacks. Cars are usually two-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicles with 2-5 seats.

Some distinction has been lost between cars and other types of vehicles in recent years due to design changes and an overall move toward better fuel efficiency. A car usually has a lower roofline, lower towing capacity, less off-road capability, and lower ground clearance than other automobiles.

2.

Trucks

When we say “truck”, we usually mean pickup truck or tractor trailer. Most people don’t drive big rigs on a daily basis so a pickup truck will be the vehicle on which we focus.

It’s generally easy to distinguish a truck or pickup from another vehicle as it has a bed. Some vehicles like the Chevy Avalanche and Honda Ridgeline have tried to be both an SUV and pickup. The Chevy El Camino, Ford Ranchero, and Chevy SSR have all tried to throw “sports car” in with the pickup recipe. Some have succeeded in cross-breeding vehicles, but most hybrids aren’t in production any longer.

3.

Vans

Vans are the friendliest automobiles on the road. They can do just about everything a family would need. Practicality is better than trucks, SUVs, and Cars, so a van strikes a great balance between all three.

Vans are larger than cars and SUVs, they can be just as tall as trucks, and can haul more people in better comfort than all three. The SUV craze has popularized third-row-seating in SUVs, but Vans can still do it better. Many vans are now available in all-wheel drive for added usability.

4.

SUVs

We like to keep it simple. An SUV is basically a station wagon or hatchback with added ground clearance. They provide practicality and a commanding view of the road as they sit higher than most cars. Most all SUVs are available with all or four-wheel-drive.

There are a dizzying variety of SUVs, most of which attempt to spotlight a different aspect of “Utility Vehicle” never been thought of before. The most common of these is the Crossover SUV. It attempts to combine the size and height of a typical truck or SUV with the driving characteristics of a traditional car. It must be working because the SUV is the hottest vehicle you can buy right now.

5.

Volkswagen NILS

The Volkswagen NILS, an electric commuter car for the urban world of the future, was designed and engineered to offer a dynamic driving experience while generating neither emissions nor noise. The blueprint followed a Formula 1 car: the driver’s in the middle, a lightweight 25-kilowatt-hour electric motor is slung out back driving the rear wheels and four freestanding 17-inch tires and wheels.

That blueprint may not qualify the NILS as a performance machine, but it is lightweight. Assembled from aluminum, polycarbonate and other lightweight materials, the car weighs just 1,015 pounds. A minimalist cabin features a seven-inch TFT display that indicates speed, range, and energy flow. A second display, which is snapped into the A-pillar, is a portable navigation and entertainment unit.

Thanks to a 40-mile range and a top speed of 80 mph, the NILS would be the ideal vehicle for most commuters, and a reflection of a new era.

6.

Chevrolet EN-V 2.0

Chevrolet’s second-generation EN-V 2.0 (Electric Networked-Vehicle) may look like designers crossed a ladybug with a Transformer robot, the two-seat electric vehicle can scoot around cities at 25 mph for 25 miles with energy from a lithium-ion battery. The prototype car was developed to show the possibilities for alleviating concerns surrounding traffic congestion, parking availability, air quality and affordability for tomorrow’s cities.

While the diminutive EN-V 2.0 has a standard steering wheel, accelerator, and brake pedal, it also contains a full complement of cameras, lidar sensors and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2X) technology to make many or all of the driving decisions while the driver rides hands-free. It also has features that consumers demand such as climate control and personal storage space.

In May of last year, the EN-V 2.0 began a vehicle sharing pilot program launched by General Motors and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Sixteen cars are in the program, and if you visit Shanghai, share a ride. The EN-V 2.0 opens up an exciting future vision of multi-modal transport.

7.

Mercedes-Benz F 125

While it’s difficult to predict what the automotive landscape will look like in 2025, this much is certain: Mercedes will still be building luxury cars for those fortunate enough to afford them.

Designed to represent what a luxury four-passenger car could look like in 2025, the F 125! is an F-Cell plug-in hybrid. Electric power for the four motors, one in each wheel, is generated on board by the F-Cell fuel cell. The research vehicle conceptually employs a 10-kilowatt-hour lithium-sulfur battery pack that can be inductively charged. Combined, the motors produce 231 horsepower and deliver all-wheel-drive traction that Mercedes is calling e4Matic.

With the use of lightweight fiber-reinforced plastic, carbon fiber, aluminum, and high-strength steel, weight is kept to a minimum. The car has autonomous features, can automatically change lanes and navigate traffic jams without driver involvement. Mercedes says the F 125! can travel up to 31 miles on battery power alone, before switching to power from the fuel cell. Then the car can travel an additional 590 miles on hydrogen power before refueling is necessary.

8.

Toyota Fun Vii

Toyota’s Fun Vii is unlike any futuristic concept car we’ve ever seen. The exterior is made of touch-screen panels that can be changed, based on the owner’s preferences, with a simple download of a smartphone app or by uploading an image to Facebook. When introduced to the media, Toyota president Akio Toyoda said:

“A car must appeal to our emotions. If it’s not fun, it’s not a car.”

The fun continues inside the 13-foot long, three passenger Fun Vii, which stands for “vehicle interactive Internet.” Like the exterior, whatever visuals you would like to see on the inside can be wirelessly painted in real-time. Then there’s the holographic “navigation concierge” lady with a cute little hat that pops out of the dashboard. She can guide you around the vehicle’s features or help find your way from one place to another. Since the car is networked with all the other cars on the road and drives itself, driving is effortless. And if all that is not enough fun, the Fun Vii can instantly convert into a video game.

Toyota has no intention of building a production version just yet but says the Fun Vii is an example of technologies that it could incorporate into vehicles in the future.

9.

Nissan PIVO 3

As you might have guessed, Nissan’s PIVO 3 concept follows PIVO 1 and 2. But unlike its forebears, the automaker would like to produce this pint-size urban electric vehicle that seats three. The PIVO 3 may not be able to “crab walk” like its immediate predecessor, but it has some slick tricks of its own.

First, its two doors slide open like a minivan’s to allow ingress and egress in tight parking spaces. The futuristic cabin places the driver’s seat forward and to the center, flanked by two passenger seats. Power is provided by individual in-wheel electric motors, with energy provided by a Nissan Leaf-inspired lithium-ion battery pack. Rear-wheel steering allows the PIVO to practically spin on its axis, and Nissan says the roughly 10-foot-long EV can make a U-turn on a road only 13 feet wide.

But the PIVO 3’s biggest trick comes from its electronic gizmos. Drivers can call into play what Nissan calls an Automatic Valet Parking (AVP) system. The system not only finds a parking space, but the car drives off on its own to park and charges itself, and then returns when called by a smartphone. The downside is this only happens in AVP-parking lots of the future, say 2025.

10.

Ford C-Max Solar Energi

Wouldn’t it be cool if plug-in vehicles could run on renewable energy, like sunlight? Ford’s C-Max Solar Energi concept brings us closer to that reality. In collaboration with California based SunPower Corp., Ford equipped a C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid with 300 watts of dark, slightly curved solar panels on the roof. Under normal daylight conditions, the solar panels cannot provide enough charging energy to justify the cost.

To solve that issue, Ford and SunPower partnered with Atlanta‘s Georgia Institute of Technology. The researchers came up with an off-vehicle solar concentrator canopy that uses a special Fresnel lens that boosts the impact of sunlight to equal a four-hour (8 kilowatt-hours) battery charge. Think of the canopy as a carport magnifying glass.

The result is, with a full charge, Ford C-MAX Solar Energi is estimated to have the same total range as a conventional C-MAX Energi of up to 620 miles, including up to 21 electric-only miles. The concept still has a charge port to power up via the grid if needed. The interesting thing is that everything is made from today’s off-the-shelf components, and could be on the road in about two years.