The future of cars: Why car exhaust will be as anti-social as cigarette smoke is today

Earlier this week I was interviewed on ABC TV about the future of cars, in a program to coincide with the start of World Solar Challenge, the annual solar car race covering the 3,021 km from Darwin to Adelaide.

I talked about several facets of the future of cars, including changing energy sources and their implications, new car materials and structures, and the rise of self-driving automobiles.

It is important to understand that while zero emission vehicles, usually electric, are a key objective in moving beyond petrol-driven cars, that electric cars usually still pollute. In most countries electricity is generated primarily by a variety of dirty fossil fuels. Refueling your car by plugging it into the mains doesn’t mean it isn’t polluting, simply that the pollution happens elsewhere.

Over the coming years and decades electricity will undoubtedly be generated through cleaner means, though it will be a slow transition.

Arguably a more pressing issue is the pollution we generate around us. I believe that we will look come to back at car exhaust the way we now look back at smoking cigarettes on cars and trains, as something which we took completely for granted at the time but later seems astounding that we tolerated it.

Despite the clear evidence of the impact of lead pollution particularly on children, it is not that long since we merrily burned thousands of gallons of lead-laced petrol outside schoolyards. We are still consistently polluting the air we breathe, generating foul smells, creating and aggravating respiratory disease, and worse.

One day people will look back and wonder at how this could be acceptable, just as we now do about the days when we allowed smoking in restaurants, workplaces, planes, trains, and buses.

Let’s make that day happen sooner rather than later.

Image source: Simone Ramella