I’m guessing that for a lot of people it will be a pickup with a good motor. You know, for all that off-roading and overlanding and long-distance towing some people can’t get enough of.
I say pickup because in this scenario your daily driver is something electric. In this scenario — maybe 10 to 15 years from now — electric cars as daily drivers will make the most financial sense for most people, whether that’s because of government subsidies and a vast charging infrastructure or because the batteries and tech get bigger and faster and stronger and cheaper. Or some combination of those.
In this scenario, you have an electric car for daily use — a Tesla Model 2, perhaps — and then, if you’re lucky, some money leftover to spend on a gas-powered weekend car. Something like an old Silverado, perhaps. The car would be something that could accomplish the things like long-distance towing that electric cars are very bad at.
Now, this is just speaking practically — obviously, there’s a whole world of collectors and people who aspire to be collectors and that world won’t go away — but for non-enthusiast owners an electric daily driver and a gas-powered truck or SUV seems to cover all the bases.
The presumption is also that we will not have solved charging and made it as fast as filling up your fuel tank in this hypothetical future. That’s a big if, for sure, though having watched all of this play out for years, it seems like that that isn’t right around the corner.
One more thing I will add: You are free to simply just name your favorite gas-powered car, or your dream gas-powered car. The C6 I put up top is neither my favorite nor my dream car but it would be up there in my personal rankings of last gas-powered car, if for nothing else than a final and complete exorcism of my youth.
But a more interesting way to approach things might be to take the question more seriously. How do you use your cars and what do you need them for? What do gas-powered cars get done that electric cars do poorly and vice versa? How interested are you (really) in babying old technology?
James May once said he wanted to go out in a BMW 3 Series and that’s as good an answer as any.