I'm not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination... but anecdotally - I don't think there's a question any more. Unless some one ACTUALLY innovates. I'm not suggesting that there haven't been any innovations - some crazy cool stuff has happened in the last hundred years of cars... but I think there is only so much more you can push the current design. We the consumers are the biggest part of the problem. I could probably build a safe and reliable compact car that gets 90mpg with existing technology... but is ANYONE going to buy that car? No. because you don't get 90mpg without sacrificing power. People don't like to go 0-60 in 30 seconds... they want it in 4. Consumers want their cake and want to eat it too. We want supercar performance on 50mpg. Ain't gonna happen with the current ICE.I'm starting to wonder that maybe we're starting to see the technological limits of ICE engines
I am an engineer and the problem isn't the motors. Some wag pissed on Honda back in '09 by pointing out that an '89 CRX HF got 49MPG highway so what the fuck was so special about the Insight? Honda's spokesman gave it right back by pointing out that an '89 CRX HF didn't have seven airbags, five crumple zones, eight cupholders or, frankly, air conditioning. This is a Saab 96. We drove one across Mexico in '84. With a surplus '61 Ford V-4 pushing a family of four across the desert, it got 70MPG on vintage '84 Mexican gas. That's because a Saab 96 weighs 1700 lbs and has a drag coefficient of 0.23. Growing up, a Mach 1 Mustang or a '74 Charger were the most ridiculously huge coupes imaginable. A '74 Mach 1 is 2700 lbs. A '74 Charger 440 Torqueflight is 4032 lbs - I mean,TWO TONS of Chrysler bombing down the road, with a whopping 14.7 lbs/HP. Astonishingly enough, a Mustang is 3800 lbs these days but the Charger is only 4500... and it now comes with 700HP. The power-to-weight ratio of a modern Charger Hellcat is DOUBLE what the teenage boy's bedroom poster made back in the glory days of 113 octane voodoo gasoline. You put that in a 2700 lb car and it will terrify you. This is 8 years old. Back in the glory days, a Lamborghini Diablo was fucking insane because it could do a quarter mile in a little under 14 seconds. I can go down the street and buy a Camaro SS that'll do it in 12.3. And it's got almost as many airbags as it has cupholders.
I'm not an engineer either, but there really have been some interesting as hell developments over the century. I half bet the biggest reason we've gotten as far as we have today is due to better manufacturing techniques allowing for tighter tolerances in components. That kind of precision has not only brought us more power, but more reliability and longer lasting parts as well. When you combine that with the fact that engines are an ass-ton more complex than when they first came about, that's actually pretty impressive. I think what might be a decent sign that we're starting to hit our peak is the resurgence of turbos in everyday commuter cars. Even mild forced induction is a great way to get more power out of an engine. I've shared it a few times before, but if you haven't seen it, check out some of the classic reviews on Motorweek's Youtube Channel. In the mid '80s, turbos were a pretty popular way to get extra power out of engines that were really the best of what manufacturers had at the time.
And I really didn't mean to discount the advancements of the last hundred years... OUR CARS KINDA KICK ASS. yep - turbos aren't necessarily a bad idea... but they are just one more piece of possible component failure... I feel like cars have become like mexican food... you pick the presentation and configuration of the parts... but they're all basically the same components arranged in a different way. [DRASTIC over-simplification... I admit] But part of me does feel that we are starting to stagnate. There are probably hundreds of engineers who would like to push me in the neck for the ingratitude.
Well, the nice thing is, even though cars are more complex these days, they're also way less finicky and way more reliable. The downside is, the complexity means they're much harder to repair and often more expensive too. As for stagnating? Eh. It's about creativity and what is and isn't viable. For example, turbo chargers and gasoline direct injection have been around since the early 1900s. Complexity and cost is what has kept them from being widely used until recently. I bet there's something absolutely crazy in development in some lab somewhere just waiting to be tested out on an F1 car or hyper car somewhere. I think the big question, the one that I actually worry about loving cars so much, is how much longer will cars be around for us to marvel at their developments?