Your prediction for the future of the Prius?

I think that sometime over the next 15 years, my wife will get the nerve up to actually try driving my Prius.

Or maybe I'll finally LET her drive it :mrgreen:

 

Wishful thinking for Americans. Too much of our population lives in relatively rural settings, or at least very low denisity areas. Makes mass transit design problematic at best (Too many stops required to minimize distance from home to system access). On the outer hand, if cars were outlawed, it would force migration into population centers and reverse the trend of suburban/ semi-rural sprawl such as we have seen in southwest Idaho, burying farmland under subdivisions.

 

No flame here, just a disagreement: Prius will remain Toyota's showcase car for leading technology. The car will change radically as new technology is introduced, so that the '04 Prius and the 2020 Prius will have nothing in common. But the Prius name will remain. Rather than a dead end, the Prius will be always new, giving its technology to the rest of the fleet a year or three after, and then moving on to the next new thing.

The Prius of 2020 will have an electric range of several hundred miles and will be grid-chargable. It will incorporate both a battery and capacitors. It will still have a fossil-fuel engine but it will be some sort of external-combustion engine, allowing it to burn cleaner fuels, and the electric motor will be powerful enough to drive the car alone. With this, the fossil-fuel engine will not have to have the quick response of an ICE. There will be much more sophisticated navigation and accident-avoidance electronics, but it will still be necessary for a human to drive it, as "artificial intelligence" will still not have made its first baby steps.

As for the transportation picture in general, the middle class will continue to shrink, making America look a little more like today's Latin American countries. A small wealthy class will drive luxury cars, large and small according to personal preference; a fairly small middle class will drive small, economical cars like the Prius described above; and the large majority of people, having slipped down from the middle class to the working-poor class, will be unable to afford personal transportation, and will rely on public transit. In 50 years these newly-poor will have moved back from the suburbs to the cities, to be closer to work, and public transit will be much more available, though not at all comfortable, similar to Mexico today.

If I am wrong about any of this, you may come to the place where my ashes have been scattered, and tell me so. Assuming the boss at your 75-hour-a-week no-vacation minimum-wage job will give you permission to take a month or two off for a walking trip, 'because you sure won't be able to pay for the gas to get here by car.

 

Daniel, you may well be right about the later part of your prediction.

 

Daniel,

If I understand your point about the Pruis Model name, I have to agree with you 100%. After all, what is in the name Prius except "to go before".

 

jchu:
you talk as if we will have a choice. i believe we will not. mass transit will become more available simply because there will be no other options.

we could possibly end up more like Daniel's scenario. either way, one thing is for sure. the days of every 16 year old driving will go away simply because only the very rich will be able to aford it and that will be a short period of time until all but essential services will be mass transit.

as it is, the desire or priviliage of living in remote areas will be strictly limited. that trend has already started as now most of our food is produced by large corporation farms.

people who have the means to live in remote areas will be forced to violate the laws by driving a car (very unlikely unless they have a lifetime stash of gas somewheres) or more likely have transportation that uses renewable energy. for one thing, for them to live off the beaten path, they will have to grow their own food, take care of all personal needs, etc on their own as support services will not be available. for the most part, it can be done, after all mail service will be greatly reduced by then if it even exists.

but the world will be much different. the physical checks and balances we deal with nowadays will be gone simply because they became prohibitively expensive to maintain. everyone will have special biometric ID's that will be nearly impossible to duplicate (after all crime will find a way no matter what) and that will be used to pay bills, buy food, etc as physically shuffling personal checks will go the route of the mail delivery system.

basically the world will be digital and the only reason why it isnt now is because the people who control the world grew up in a time when the typewriter was the most valuable office tool. that will all change.

remember a few years ago when giving your social security number over the phone was about the dumbest thing you could ever do??

well because of the US Patriot Act, you can no longer apply for credit unless you give out personnal info to identify yourself... well that is only the begining.

 

DaveinOlyWA,
I am not making any judgements about the future of mass transportation or not. Just observing that even in suburbs or even some sprawling cities like L.A., mass transit is difficult proposition at best. To be viable, mass transit requires a minimum population, i.e. number of bodies per square mile.