2014 Automotive Tech In Review

2014 saw the battle of two giants, McLaren with the astonishing P1 (seen below) and Ferrari with its gorgeous, KERS equippedLaFerrari. The significant step forward for both hypercarslie in the sheer amount of tech crammed into them, from a hybrid powertrain which harnesses the power of electricity to give the power figures a hefty step up, to Formula 1 derived aero, gearbox, and propulsion technology.

No less significant is the Porsche 918 (below), which is more of a tech frenzy than a proper car, a cursory glance at the list of features on the 918 shows that Porsche was more interested in flexing its muscles and showing off rather than competing head on with Ferrari and McLaren. Our favourite?

Airless Tyres

Reinventing the wheel got a kickstart this year as the first batch of airless tyres went into production. Michelin, always the pioneering force in tyre technology, opened a brand new facility in South Carolina in the US to mass produce the Tweel.

The idea behind the Tweel, and indeed, most airless tyres, is a fixed hub with flexible, deformable polyurethane spokes crisscrossing around it. The hub is connected to the drivetrain, and the deformable spokes enable the tyres to have more flexibility over rocks and other items that would normally put an air-filled tyre out of service. The Tweel is barely cost effective enough for the time being, but expect production costs to go down as the rest of the industry catches up. The only downside? Since the airless wheel operates as a single unit (no separate rims), the range of wheel designs will go down drastically, reducing the aesthetic appeal of the car's rolling stock.

Autonomous Driving

We've all seen the BMW 3 series doing laps of the Nurburgring without a driver, and the experimentation with removing the driver from the driving has been endless over the last decade or so. Now, though, it's being implemented. The latest Mercedes E-Class features a semi-autonomous driving mode, where the car takes control at low speeds. It's a useful feature when you're stuck in heavy traffic and you would rather just get to the morning paper instead of constantly starting and stopping. It also features a lane-departure system and the car can stop itself entirely if needed, thus preventing any accidental collisions. As long as the real driving duties aren't taken away from humans, we can all avoid a Skynet situation where these "intelligent" cars start taking over the world.

Electric Motorbikes

With electric cars being all the rage now, why would the two wheeler section be deprived in any way? Yamaha and other bike manufacturers are taking the electric motorbike as a viable option for the future. In 2014, Yamaha showcased the PES1 and PED1, two variants of the same electric motorbike, one for the road and another in dirt-bike spec. They look cool, require little charging, and the instant acceleration and torque from the electric motors should provide a whole new experience for thrill-seekers preferring two wheels. As we said before, the future is all electric.

The City Car Of The Future: Bmw I3

Our sister publication, Bytes, named the BMW i3 the most significant tech advancement in the world of automobiles over the last year. We'd have to agree, because the i3 paves the way for the future of urban transport. Yes, it is prohibitively expensive for a city car, but the all-electric BMW offers so much in one package, it would be pretty difficult to ignore it as anything less than the start of the future. Its snazzy, bold, practical, and a wake-up call to other manufacturers who aren't Tesla that they need to get a move on and introduce all-electric models. The i3's racy cousin, the i8, is mind blowing from a design perspective, but we feel the all-electric concept needs to be applied to the cars for the masses first.