Futurists, take note. Car companies aren't stopping their tech development with lane-departure warning systems and automatic parallel parking gear. Right now, in labs all over the world, new tech is being born — along with cars that look like smartphones. What's the coolest car technology on the drawing board?
It's not quite sexy, unless you happen to like cars that weigh under 3,000 pounds and are even safer than the cars we're driving now. The coolest stuff, wethinks, is the weight-reducing tech currently in play. Materials like mass-produced carbon fiber, new ways to use aluminum for things it hadn't been used for before — like car frames — and new composites and polymers for structural elements. Maybe the car of the future will look like the best cars of the past, only safer.
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