Improvements In Car Technology The cars today have technology that people take for granted. When the first car came out it barely had one horse power, which means that it was very slow and that it probably could not carry more than 2 people and could not go faster than 10 miles per hour. Today sports cars can go up to 200 miles per hour. Ever since gasoline engines were invented, they have been modified to be more fuel efficient and more powerful. Most of the advances in cars are in the realm of safety, but some are pure convenience. Equipment and features the public takes for granted today – electric ignition, automatic windshield wipers, power steering, airbags, cruise control and many more – began life as unexpected advances that dazzled the public. When GM introduced the first automatic transmission, in the 1940 Oldsmobile, it was a $57 option and more of a curiosity than a “gotta-have” feature. Today automatic transmission have advanced to the point of providing as many as eight forward gears, driver-shift options, computerized driver-adaptable shifting and different shifting modes, like “sport,” “touring” and “snow.” But in 1940, not shifting the transmission yourself was a radical concept. (Patrick E. George. “Top 10 Improvements in Engine Design.” 5-new-gas-engine-technologies.htm, 10-18-14). Today’s “cutting edge” is tomorrow’s “commonplace.” Backing out of a parking space in a busy lot can be an adventure, but soon enough all the cars will have rear-pointing radar around for alerting drivers to unseen objects immediately behind them like a fence, wall, tree or another vehicle. New radasr technology searches for approaching cross traffic. When it “sees” traffic approaching while you’re backing up, it sounds an alarm. Most people know that the Ford Model T was the first affordable car. The original Model T, released in 1908, had a 2.9-liter 4-cylinder engine with just 22 horsepower. That’s a tiny output for its size compared to the engines that we have today, but it sure did better than the engine in what is considered to be the first car, the 1885 Benz patent Motorwagen. That car had a single-piston engine and generated just two-third of a single horsepower. (Patrick E. George. “Top 10 Improvements in Engine Design.” 5-new-gas-engine-technologies.htm, 10-18-14). As you can see, car engines have been in constant evolution since the very beginning of the invention of gasoline engines. Today they are more powerful, quieter, more durable, less polluting and more fuel-efficient than they have ever been before, thanks to constant advancements in engine design and technology. Car engineers are constantly working on ways to improve the internal combustion engine and carry it into the future. With all the hype about hybrid, electric and alternative fuel cars, it’s easy to think that the age of the gasoline engine is over. When you’ve got cars that run on hydrogen or that plug into the wall, the gasoline engine can seem like old technology. But the fact remains that the vast majority of cars sold in the United States are powered by gasoline engines. The dominance of gas engines in the automotive market is going to continue for the foreseeable future. Car makers use gasoline engines for a lot of reasons. People are used to them, there’s an infrastructure that supports them, and they fit nicely with how most Americans use their cars. That’s not to say that gasoline engines don’t have their downsides. They pollute and they’re dependent on gasoline. Though the engine in the car in people’s driveways have a lot in common with the engines used on the earliest cars, new
