Over the years, humans have predicted all sorts of possible futures. From the Jetsons to the (probably much more likely) cyberpunk dystopias of the ‘80s, everyone can have their own vision of the world to come. But last Friday we asked for your take on the future with one simple question: What’s the most futuristic car you can buy today? Let’s see what you said.
My entry:
Sleek, fast, expensive, and electric. If car trends continue in the direction they’re headed now, the Air is certainly the model to follow.
Despite the stupid name:
Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo
I guess is the future of Porsche. EVs are just going to be heavy, so expect Grand Touring rather than pure sports cars. Expect a lot of electronic controls to get them to handle.
The Taycan fits within the Lucid genre, performance EVs for those that can afford them. If you ask automakers what the future will be, it’ll look a lot like this.
Futuristic? As in what most of us will be driving in 10 years?
Hyundai Ioniq 5
High riding Five passenger EV, large cargo area. I see these as the future of personal transportation
Or this, if the automakers aren’t quite so luxurious. The Ioniq is more of a broad people-mover, less concerned with speed than with cost. It’s also retrofuturistic, harkening back to the hard lines and sealed-beam headlights of the eighties in a way that deeply appeals to me, personally.
Big and Heavy EV SUVs.... so I’ll go with R1S.
Why do we always think of future cars being bigger, heavier, less efficient? Why are they always boxy, and often olive drab? What does that say about our hopes for the future?
Polestar 2. I saw one yesterday in my neighborhood. Not my cup of tea (look like a small SUV) but that is where buyers go for and it does looks good on the street.
Is the Polestar 2 a crossover or a sedan? Or a crossover-sedan? I think the latter, too big to be a standard three-box but too sedan-y to be a standard crossover.
Can we agree that the Citroën DS was one of the most futuristic cars of its time? It pioneered unconventional engineering solutions that were unheard of at the time; hydropneumatic suspension, a brake pedal that was a champignon, a narrower rear track than the front, etc.
It was so ahead of a future… a future that never actually came.
On that basis, I present you the Toyota Mirai. It is a valiant effort being a production car with its hydrogen fuel cell.
It is pioneering a future that will not happen. It is a contemporary Citroën DS.
Is the Toyota Mirai the modern Turbine Car? A bold vision of the future, a new way to power our mobility, that will never see the light of day and end up as a footnote anecdote in the history of the automobile?
do pre-orders count? if so i’d say the tesla cybertruck, not because I think it’s going to revolutionise the industry, but because we’re not going to see one on the street at least until 2030.
The Cybertruck has to be the future of the automobile, because it sure isn’t the present. I guess it could still never come, existing merely as renders, a broken-window prototype, and a single test unit with a random assortment of windshield wipers.
The SSC Tuatara:
Depending on how you spec it out, you can have 1350hp to 2200hp—that ought to get you to the Safeway el-quicko for your grocery runs.
Declaring the Future of Cars to be a limited-production, LS-powered, seven-figure-price-tag supercar is, in a way, optimistic. Maybe we’ll someday live in a world with competent enough public transit that private cars do become such specialized, enthusiast-focused vehicles, in the absence of any real need to own one. I doubt it, though.
Most futuristic vehicle right now is from John Deere, and it is an agricultural farm tractor with full autonomous function. Suck it, Elon.
Seriously though, you want to see futuristic tech in vehicles then check an agricultural showroom. Entertainment setups, cab-comfort, shielded glass and UV protection, safety adjustments (admittedly, mostly unused), GPS tech, fuel monitoring, glass cockpit systems, automatic function settings, the list goes on. John Deere might be fucking farmers over with the right-to-repair shit, but the tech they, and every other farm equipment operator, are putting out is insanely futuristic. Honestly, it beggars belief. It leaves consumer automobile makers in the dust.
John Deere may be bringing the most advanced AVs to market, but god help you if you want to change the oil on one. Or the tires. Or the mirrors. In fact, you know what, you can’t even look at it without dealership approval.
BMWs sold in the UK, Germany, New Zealand, and South Africa (for now). Like it or not, car features-as-a-service are coming for our hard-earned money. Microtransactions for heated seats and ADAS are the future.
Maybe even loot boxes will make their way into the mix. $5 gets you random features for 24 hours: 4 cosmetic features (blue ambient lighting, special font on the infotainment screen), a safety feature (blind-spot monitoring), and a premium feature (AWD or 4-wheel steering). It’s the stuff of nightmares...
Hey, blue interior lighting is a Rare feature. Personally I’ve been re-rolling until I get purple, because I want an all-Legendary build, though the gold of the Epic gear is tempting.
As long as money isn’t an object, I’ll say the Koenigsegg Gemera (can’t post images). There is nothing about that car that isn’t from the future. I can only hope that a lot of the technology in it eventually filters its way into more mass produced and affordable cars, which over time, tends to be the case.
Freevalve may be the future of the internal combustion engine, but it also may be a future that’s arrived too late. Will manufacturers, now quickly ending their ICE development, take the time to invest in adding Freevalve to engines just to eke a few more years out of them?
Isn’t the S-class basically a peak into features that become standard 10-20 years later? It’s that or the Rivian lineup as they currently sit, just selling trucks & SUVs.
By this logic, every car will have two-tone exteriors in the coming years. I, for one, welcome our bicolored overlords.
“we were promised we’d be driving by the time we reached the 2020s?”
I was thinking about this the other day. There simply isn’t one.
EV’s aren’t new. Cars have pretty much looked the same since stamping processes made it easier to create swoopy cars. Tech in cars is not progressing as fast as it can elsewhere (likely mostly due to regulations). We’ve seen really interesting and futuristic concept cars, only to see them arrive the same as everything else, or not arrive at all.
Cars just haven’t progressed nearly as much as they could have…with one exception: safety. Think about the safety systems in the cars in Demolition Man. The full car foam that protects occupants. The safety equipment in cars today feels much more like the future than the cars themselves.
Personally, I’m waiting for the Zorb of Immortality promised in the seminal masterpiece Speed Racer (2008). Whenever drivers in that film are milliseconds from meeting their ends, they’re ejected in a bouncy, transparent ball that keeps them forever safe from harm. This is how I want to never die.
It’s not produced anymore, but still on sale. It has every single futuristic cliche imaginable.
I don’t get the other cars people posted. Lucid? Fucking basic. IONIQ5? Futuristic as a pacman arcade cabinet. F150 Lightning? You never been to Home Depot?
Nothing says “the future” like a car made in limited numbers for limited years that never really caught on with enthusiasts or the general public and died a quiet death. Sure, you could say a car that was discontinued two years ago is “sort of the opposite of the future, from an empirical and literal standpoint,” but consider: it looks very cool.
After massive environmental collapse/upheaval and the total fracturing of society [as we know it] as a whole, THIS will be the car of the future, still on sale today. Toyota Land Cruiser 70.
If I had to put my money on any vehicle on this list, it would be the Land Cruiser. Older models, with just enough electrics to run reliably, powered by homemade biodiesel. They’ll be our chariots through the Resource Wars, those uncertain years of drought and famine brought on by an ever-decaying climate and exacerbated by the ultra-wealthy hoarding what’s left in bunkers like mythic dragons. You may be awaited in Valhalla, but you’ll need a chariot to rice eternal, shiny and chrome.