The car of the future of the past


In 1957, the Ford Motor Company released a concept for the Nucleon, a sleek car with unparalleled gas mileage and zero emissions ... thanks to its internal nuclear fission reactor. This might seem silly now, but in the years leading up to the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, an influential series of predictions were made about the future of cars. It is important not to lose sight of those retro-visions of the future, argues Jathan Sadowski, a graduate student in the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University.

In an article for Slate magazine, Sadowski profiles a variety of speculative concepts for the future of the automobile, from the solar-powered Sunray Sedans proposed by James C. Zeder, vice president at Chrysler, to General Motors’ self-driving Firebird III concept, which packed the guts of a jet engine under its hood. Revisiting these techno-optimistic dreams of an exciting and efficient near future from the 1950s and 1960s, Sadowski is struck by how the thinking behind these prototypes continues to resonate with researchers, engineers and consumers today. After all, we are still struggling to make getting around faster, safer and cleaner, and still chasing the dream of building cars that do our driving for us.

Sadowski concludes by reflecting that these historical visions of the future can help us reach a better understanding of how we got to where we are and where we might go next. “The future isn’t just something that happens,” he writes. “It’s built on top of the aspirations and technologies that came before.”

Article source: Slate magazine

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