Top 10 Car Industry Innovations Coming in the Next 10 Years

These are the cars of the future! Or at least some very futuristic innovations. Welcome to WatchMojo.com, and today we’re counting down our picks for the top 10 innovations in the car industry over the next 10 years. For this list, we’ll be ranking the most highly anticipated features that will likely affect the automobile industry in the near future. Some might already exist, and may’ve even been applied in a model or two, but these innovations are anything but average today. They could include safety features, performance enhancements or cosmetic boosts, all of which possess the potential to become standard industry inclusions over the nextten years.

There are so many integral working parts that go into constructing an automobile, with proper working headlights serving as one of the most important components to keep the driver safe. Luckily, headlight technology has come a long way over the years, with Laser Headlights serving as the latest innovation in an ever-evolving industry. Car companies like BMW and Audi have been working intensely over the years with Laser Headlight technology, creating headlamps that burn bright, far and strong, but use far less power. First available on a production vehicle in 2014, frickin’ laser headlight technology will increase street vision for the driver, while hopefully decreasing accidents along the way.

Losing your car keys is never a good feeling. But what if there were a technology that could eliminate that helpless feeling once and for all? If recent patents granted to companies like Ford are any indication, many car companies are seeking to make the car key obsolete, pushing theenvelope beyond the already existing push-button ignition in favor of a biometric system that acknowledges the driver’s fingerprint for access. Or, if you really want to feel like a super-spy, what about voice verification and retina, iris or facial recognition? Any of these measures not only customizes each vehicle to a particular set of drivers, thereby making it difficult to steal; they might also make keys a thing of the past.

How would you like to drive a real life Transformer? If the auto industry has its way, this might just become a reality – and relatively soon, if concept cars by companies like Toyota are any clue. Reconfigurable Body Panels would be lightweight, eco-friendly, and able to snap on and off from a car’s frame kinda like LEGO, in order to best suit the drivers needs. This would not only make replacing damaged or dirty panels easier for both car owners and professional body shop technicians; but having the power to swap out panels could enable a driver to switch his or her carfrom a convertible to a pick-up at a moment’s notice. “More than meets the eye” is right!

We all know that the airbags that deploy within the car cabin save lives on a daily basis. However, car companies like Mercedes-Benz are working on new airbag technology that could make accidents even less dangerous. In the event of an inevitable crash, airbags deploying beneath the car’s frame would not only slow the car down, lessening the threat of injury upon impact; they would also lift the car to offset thenatural downward motion caused by braking hard. This would hopefully make sure that the passengers inside are held secure by the seatbelts without slipping underneath, ensuring that an accident would not only be less damaging for the cars, but also for the humans inside.

Tire technology may be revolutionized over the next decade if companies like Goodyear have their way. Not only is it possible that cars may adopt Michelin’s airless “Tweel” technology over the next ten years, but Goodyear has their creative sights set on changing the car tire’s shape altogether, specifically into a sphere. Expressly designed for self-driving cars, these tires would essentially allow for a more fluid range of motion as the car’s frame magnetically hovers above the spheres. Plus, eliminating the need for a traditional mechanical drivetrain and suspension would save consumers from costly repairs. Time will tell whether this interesting idea will be applied in the passenger car market. But if it is, we can’t wait to parallel park…

This next innovation might be music to the ears of electric car fans, as energy storing panels could serve as the wave of the future when it comes to efficiently conducting and storing energy. Within these panels you’d find supercapacitors. They would store and release their charge to the carat an exponentially faster rate than the current method which utlizes heavy, lead-acid or lithium ion batteries. Although there are models of electric cars that currently use a combination of supercapacitors and lighter lithium batteries, the hope is that the next decade might see theimplementation of electric car technology that operates solely based on these energy storing body panels.

#4: Cars That Communicate with Each Other and the Road

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It may seem like total science fiction, but our cars will likely be doing a lotta talking over the next decade or so – to us, to other vehicles and even to pieces of roadway infrastructure. Although automobiles aren’t likely to become our sentient overlords anytime soon (we hope!), the technology is already in place to make our cars much more communicative when it comes to what’s going on around us as we drive, thanks to companies like GM and Toyota. Communication technology will not only inform us when a pedestrian is in our blindspot or what the traffic is like down theroad; it may even help cars to know their proximity to other cars around them, making our daily drives that much easier.

While we’re on the subject of cars communicating with each other, what about how we communicate with our cars? Developed by Ford, the aptly titled Active Health Monitoring is a technology which enables the car to monitor the health of its driver, taking into account the surroundings of thecabin while also providing important tips on managing health issues via a cloud-based internet system. Ever wonder what the pollen counts are like when you’re on a road trip? Active Health Monitoring can fill you in on the levels of ragweed and other allergens in the surrounding areas, while also being able to monitor glucose levels and offer tips for diabetes sufferers at a moment’s notice.

Have you ever wondered what driving might be like in the post apocalyptic future, with your car acting as your eyes and ears into the outside world? This is what the vehicular experience might be like if Augmented Reality Dashboards come standard with every car or truck purchase. Already introduced by BMW and way beyond standard GPS, an Augmented Reality experience would provide the same directional assistance, yet also showcase the best possible way to pass a line of cars, or measure your distance from nearly everything in the road, for example. And all of this would be right on the dashboard, so you never have to glance away to that GPS console ever again. Before we unveil our number one car innovation, here are a few honorable mentions: - Comprehensive Vehicle Tracking - Self Healing Paint - Enhanced Gesture Control - Four Cylinder Supercar / Fuel Efficient Sports Cars

#1: Self-Driving Cars

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We’ve all been there: you’re on a road trip with your best friends, and you snagged the overnight shift, but you’re dead tired. Sure, you could drive 65 with the windows down, chugging coffee the whole way. But how ‘bout just inserting the destination point and catching some Zs whilethe car does all the work? Self-driving car technology and experimentation has been a big deal in the news lately, with companies like Mercedes, BMW, Tesla and even Google testing the tech. So it’s entirely possible that we’ll see this innovation over the next ten years. Some may be petrified of leaving all the driving duties behind, but others might see this as the best thing to happen to the car industry since the engine. Do you agree with our list? Which automobile innovation are you most anticipating over the next decade? For more forward thinking top 10s published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com!