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Few things capture the thoughts like the mysterious future. Movies and television have shown us some pretty ingenious possibilities of what cars would become. What form did you think transportation would take in the year 2010? The self-driven taxi from Total Recall? Hovering craft like in Star Wars? The sky was the limit, literally, for what cars would look like.

That isn’t the direction that technology has taken. Cars already do what we need them to do. No purpose other than extreme coolness would be served by having cars that hover. Cars already have sufficient speed that the highway patrol has to try to slow people down. A lot of the time we can’t even use the speed our cars are capable of because there’s too much traffic. Although we do want good looking cars, consumers are choosing cars that look good, but pretty boring. After market upgrades are made to blend in with the original – boring – look of the car. Auto makers tout the vehicles’ reliability and safety records, which has improved exponentially in recent years.

Is there anything we need that our current cars don’t offer? More practicality – fuel efficiency. The price of gasoline has soared in recent years, and it’s expensive just to drive around town. Cars that run on less gasoline, or none at all, are the hot sellers. There are a lot of options for accomplishing this goal, from propane to hydrogen to biofuels. All of these technologies have challenges, especially in keeping their costs down enough that they will be economically comparable to gasoline powered cars.

One technology has taken the lead in the last few years and reached the consumer via the car dealership showroom: electricity. Hybrids have been here for a while, and fully electric cars are appearing now. Toyota was the first to get its hybrid, the Prius, to consumers at a reasonable price. The other automakers weren’t far behind. The Honda Civic, Ford Escape, Nissan Altima, and the Infiniti M35 are just a few of the options. Hybrids don’t have to be small anymore, either, as evidenced by GMC’s Sierra and Cadillac’s Escalade. The government has encouraged the use of cars that consume less gasoline and don’t cause as much damage to the environment by offering financial incentives. You can go buy one of these cars today at your local Dallas Ford Dealership, Atlanta Honda Dealer or GMC Dealership with no problem.

The fully electric car is the next wave. You’ve seen them for quite a while, in experimental cars owned by the local power company or as spec cars at car shows. Finally cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt are hitting showrooms. There are still some hurdles to overcome, like limited range and price and longevity of batteries, but this is clearly the direction that new cars are headed.

Good old fashioned fuel efficiency is getting overlooked to some degree. Even gasoline powered engines can be greatly improved if they just use less gas. Though less flashy, fuel efficiency has been slowly and steadily improving for many years. Look at the non-hybrid version of the Honda Civic, which gets 34 MPG or the Ford Focus with its 35 MPG highway. This was unimaginable back in the 80′s when gas was only $1.35 a gallon and we loved our V8s.

So while we’re unlikely to see cars like the DeLorean from Back to the Future or Kitt from the Knight Rider, cars will continue to evolve to meet our ever-changing needs. America’s love affair with the automobile is far from over.

Written by Hannah Valez Virginia Mitsubishi Dealership