the FUTURE
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Taking a Td Look at 46 Hence
THE turn of the year is a traditional time for crystalgazing and, in a period when the railways are in the melting pot, hovercraft are hovering in the wings and great things are perhaps imminent in cross-Channel haulage relationships, it is especially interesting to take a look at what some people are predicting for the more distant future.
The Commercial Motor's Netherlands contemporary, Bari ffsvervoer, celebrated its 40th anniversary in a recent issue and, under the title of "Road Transport-40 years in the past; 40 years in the future," included some stimulating speculation about vehicle development.
The first project is a design for a 2-ton van by car and commercial-vehicle stylist Piet Olyslager, whose head office is near Queen Juliana's Royal Palace at Soestdijk. He bases his design on certain paramount considerations: Styling is a matter of evolution, and only functional designs are worth study, while the materials that will be available, and the technical features that may become feasible, must be worked into a vehicle of the type most likely to meet users' requirements.
also. .
As an aid to safety and working efficiency the driver is to be given right royal treatment. He sits in a roomy cab which is air-conditioned, the air intake being in the peaked roof that also acts as a glare shield over the huge self-supporting windscreen; this is to be made of special strong, non-reflecting plastics. Not only are the very comfortable seats adjustable, but the steering column is adjustable, too, and instead of peering into rear-vies the driver will merely scan the tiny T.V. sere into the steering/instrument console in order to rear and side view. There are, in fact, no instru such, but merely indicator lights. A hard ru plastics bumper surrounds the entire body.
Power steering is envisaged, so is automatic tran and as an aid to manceuvring in city streets Mr. toys with the idea of four-wheel steering, but th conflict with his desire for essential simplicity in achieve low first cost and minimum maintenance.
Tranker for 2001
Far removed from Mr. Olyslager's idea of " st for the city" is the projected design for what i: the Europ-freighter, 2001, by its sponsor, W. B. Brink, styling engineer from Van Doorne's Aut frabriek, makers of DAF vehicles in Holland. 'I is featured in Bedriffsvervoer and, as can be se the drawing, this long-distance trunk vehicle for hence is supremely faithful to the box shape" Mr. van der Brink makes the not unreasonable lion that, by A.D. 2001, all major trunk roads s traffic automatically controlled by electronic si even perhaps with entirely automatic steering in v‘ re guided along a path determined by electrical from a cable laid along the road. This being so, ver " assumes a primarily supervisory role, lying j-conditioned cabin on a couch reached through a lap in the side of the body.
his couch he scans his closed-circuit television which, using an infra-red stereoscopic system, tim to observe the road and its surroundings by night and in dense fog. His only active task is .uvre the vehicle up to and away from the loading : each end of the journey, for which purpose he yte electro-hydraulic control of engine and steering. rower unit is a turbine, driving the tandem rear -1 alternative system would employ a torque conansmission. Both on the rear axles and the twin axles, air springing is employed.
mite so far in the future are the vehicle design foreshadowed by Victor G. Raviolo, who made his omments in Seattle, U.S.A., as executive director, otor Co., but has since been appointed director of ing at Dagenham, which brings his remarks literally ome.
r as commercial vehicles are concerned, his chief relate to power units. On this front he reported .c1 in America are well advanced with a completely „turbine arrangement that promises to overcome fuel consumption which has been the main drawth this type of unit.
ect, they have taken the simple turbine and added :tharger which, Mr. Raviolo claimed, results in a fuel economy comparable with that of the diesel ,under most operating conditions, while largely retaining the .turbine's very high power-to-weight ratio and, of course, its inherently flexible transmission. First cost remains high, and will only be recovered over a long working life.
Meanwhile, stratified-charge combustion may yet enable the petrol-burning piston engine to offer a potent new challenge to the diesel for commercial vehicles, if current Ford laboratory experiments can be reproduced in commercial production form. Unlike diesels, petrol engines cannot burn very lean fuel mixtures in excess air, but by separating the total charge into an easily ignited rich portion, and a very lean portion which is fired by the energy of the rich mixture, stratified-charge ,burning can be achieved. This is what Ford of America have been doing in their research programme and, although the final results of these tests are by no means certain, Mr. Raviolo foresees the possibility of stratified-charge combustion providing improvements of 30 to 40 per cent in fuel m.p.g.
Further away than this, perhaps belonging in the same decade as the Europ-freighter, are new sources of energy for power units. Mr. Raviolo, while admitting that it is likely to be a long, long time before practical substitutes for current fuels become generally available, points the way when he says the search is still on for a formula that gives quick release of electrical energy yet provides for its manufacture, storage and transport at low cost. When this happens, the quiet, clean, gearless operation of batteryelectric machines will be combined with the long range and power of present-day piston-engined trunk goods vehicles. , Perhaps it will be 2001, too, before we get that. H.B.C.