With the upcoming ban on petrol and diesel cars coming in 2030 being less than a decade away, we thought we would take a look at what cars may look like and how technology will need to improve over the next nine years.
Can we expect the style of cars to change by 2030?
Whilst we can obviously expect car designs to change, as they have done over the years, it is unlikely that we will see anything particularly drastic. As this is likely to cause huge changes for drivers anyway we doubt that designers will want to make these changes any bigger by introducing new design concepts that we aren’t used to already.
Having said that given the different nature of electric vehicles there will no doubt be some changes that we will see. The biggest changes we expect to see are front grilles and interiors. This is because electric cars don’t have the same radiator requirements as conventional cars, so it is likely that we will see some changes here. We also expect to see designers maximising the cabin space, which we have already seen with the new I-Pace from Jaguar and Volkwagen’s ID 3.
We do also expect to see is the addition of more aerodynamic technologies as many engineers feel that there is more to be gained from the performance of electric cars. There may well also be an increase in active aero technologies added to cars with additions such as moveable wings, splitters, diffusers and more that will help add more stability.
But when it comes to the car as a whole we don’t anticipate a huge change as designers will want to make use of existing structural and crash knowledge that already exists.
Will The Mechanical Layout Change?
This is something that we definitely expect to change, given the compactness of electric motors. This means car designers will have more flexibility around where they are mounted. This is something that we are already seeing with new electric vehicles that are being released. We’re not sure whether any trends will emerge, but at this stage designers have a lot of flexibility for how they approach this.
Will Cars Get Smaller?
Whilst new technologies for electric vehicles do provide the potential for cars to get smaller, the general consensus is that people don’t want to compromise on size and therefore space. This means that it is unlikely that we will notice a significant change in the overall size of cars. That’s not to say that we won’t see options for smaller cars, but certain technologies such as batteries will need to advance further to allow for this to happen.
Will The EVs Of Today Become Obsolete?
The Electric Vehicles that are already around today will still have the same advantages that they offer now – quietness, smoothness, ease of driving, cheap servicing and cheap fuelling – but it may be that battery degradation begins to become an issue. Having said that initial reports suggest the batteries are not degrading at the rate that they were initially expected to. It is however likely that with the advances expected with electric car batteries they won’t offer the same range that we will see with electric cars released in 2030 and even over the next nine years, but this will only mean that they are less suitable for long-haul drives, but will still work perfectly for those that don’t require as long a range.
What Technology Is Needed For Electric Cars Over The Next Nine Years?
Electric Vehicles have come a long way in recent years, but for the transition to all cars being electric is likely to require some significant advancements in a few areas.
Whilst batteries have come a long way already, we haven’t seen any significant changes in the batteries used, with advancements coming from internal packaging, software and cooling. In order to truly take electric vehicles forwards there need to be more developments made and a move away from lithium ion batteries, which are still too big, heavy and costly to be rolled out en masse.
On technology that is being worked on that would help to facilitate a mass roll out of electric cars would be solid state batteries. This would provide a number of benefits such as being safer, higher capacity, and far quicker to charge. Whilst we have yet to see this technology it is safe to say that it would be a game changer if it can be developed in the next few years.
The other development that is sorely needed to truly make electric vehicles a viable option to truly move away from unsustainable technology, is a move away from the use of rare earth elements for manufacturing batteries. Without this we are only replacing one unsustainable technology with another.
The Road To 2030
So there you have it, our predictions for the future of electric vehicles as we move towards the 2030 deadline of the ban on petrol and diesel cars. We are excited to see how things progress over the next nine years and how the technologies will move forwards to bring electric vehicles to the masses.