Cars are about as analogue as you can get. In an age of digital, electric everything, cars are still greasy, gas powered metal machines, for better or worse. But cars are also changing fast: Jalopnik recently reached out to readers for predictions of what automotive technologies will likely be missing from the cars of the not so distant feature, and the responses are interesting.
Some changes Jalopnik posits will be minor. The detachable fuel cap will likely soon be a thing of the past, for example, now that alternatives like Ford’s Easy Fuel system exist and allow you to refill your tank without having to worry about losing your gas cap. The physical ignition key will similarly eventually disappear. Many new cars are started with buttons, some of which are even use biometric recognition to make sure it’s actually you trying to start your car.
Other predicted changes are more fundamental to the car. The manual gearbox is gradually being phased out as dual-clutch automatics are becoming cheaper and more efficient. The camshaft has also been marked for extinction. Swedish designer Christian von Koenigsegg thinks they’ll be gone within a decade. It also seems safe to predict that built-in dash displays like GPS and other included software will be displaced in favor of a simple iPhone dock in which the apps can be updated, are free and typically work better.
So take another look at your old scrap car; cars won’t look the same ever again.
