Top Technology of the Century

Vehicle-to-Grid Charging: Imagine a world where the roads are filled with electronic vehicles. They create of a vast network of backup batteries, with plugged-in cars feeding power back into the grid at critical moments to help avoid outages. Then, electric car owners who join the battery reserves could be credited or paid for their occasional output. This type of capacity could mean overhauling the nation's core electricity infrastructure, creating a truly smart grid with two-way digital bandwidth on most power lines. Or it could simply mean more advanced car chargers and/or smart meters, which would communicate wirelessly with the local grid manager. Whatever the approach, widespread vehicle-to-grid charging could mean years more research and millions in funding, but the payoff — for the utilities, as well as consumers — is too persuasive to not.

Smart Vehicles, or vehicles that speak to one another, using a combination of GPS data and short-range wireless signals, are a communication technology that may be seen within the century. At the Frankfurt Motor Show, one automaker featured an onboard communication system that analyzes traffic flow and traffic-light timing to present a driving route that's optimized for energy efficiency. The result of a more universal intelligent vehicle network could range from the simple, such as instant traffic advisories and collision alerts based on signals ahead, to the sublime — vehicles digitally chained together, each one following the lead vehicle's commands. With its combination of autonomous driving and old-fashioned drafting, platooning could reduce traffic congestion and improve fuel economy. That's just one possible application of intelligent vehicles — a milestone on the road to the fully self-driven automobile.

Smart Materials may be the most dramatic trend in automotive materials, yet at the same time they are a bit strange, and would certainly take some getting used to. Smart alloys, like the ones pioneered by researchers at General Motors, could allow for morphing spoilers and air dams that flow into place on demand, and door panels and bumpers that reshape themselves after a collision. These materials are heat-activated, becoming flexible at higher temperatures, and snapping back into shape as they cool. The first applications of smart materials will be subtle. These materials may be available in the century but there are many issues to be answered. How do you seam-weld panels that are designed to shrivel under heat? Do you incorporate onboard heating elements to activate specific smart alloy components, or funnel waste heat from the engine or battery pack? An industry focused on the economics and logistics of rapid, bulk assembly will have to pioneer new manufacturing techniques to accommodate shape-shifting alloys.