Driving technology for a cleaner future

SAE 100 Future look: Someday you may reminisce about filling your car with gasoline, just as your grandparents may have told you about the old days when homes were heated with wood or coal.

But chances are that it will be perhaps 25 years before you will have that opportunity. While we may not know precisely what propulsion technologies will drive us in the future, we are fairly certain that the internal-combustion engine will continue to offer economical performance for the foreseeable future.

According to a study by DRI·WEFA (now called Global Insight) and Arthur D. Little, petroleum will be the primary fuel through 2020. Other fuels offer promise for the future, but petroleum still packs more energy into the most manageable package at a relatively low cost. Car makers face a difficult challenge: to meet increasingly stringent emissions and fuel-economy standards on the current fleet while developing the clean technology of tomorrow at a price consumers are willing to pay.