Original subtitles

[energetic music]

- [Narrator] Since the invention of the wheel,

humans have pushed the boundaries and possibilities

to go faster, higher, and deeper than ever before.

The engineering evolution of cars, ships, planes, trains,

submersibles, and rockets has been a monumental journey

of inspiration, innovation, sometimes failure, and success.

So how did we get to where we are now,

and where are we going next?

[pencil scratching]

[energetic music]

There is perhaps no piece of technology

more ubiquitous to humanity than the car.

- These are essential parts of our everyday mobility.

They're technologies that inform industry,

and we rely quite heavily on them.

- [Narrator] The automobile has become a dominant feature

in our daily lives, impacting everything from work,

travel, and even leisure.

Over the decades, manufacturers have constantly strived

to push vehicles past their limits.

- When Tesla unveiled their self-driving functionality,

it was really game changing.

- They were different from anything

the public had ever seen before.

- [Narrator] Seemingly small innovations

have led to major milestones in engineering,

helping us go further, faster,

and with more autonomy.

But the way in which we use cars

is at a pivotal time in history.

Now we find ourselves

in the middle of the biggest automotive revolution

since Henry Ford's first production line

started mass producing his vehicles in 1930.

- There were a lot of technologies

that needed to come together

to have an effective automobile.

- [Narrator] But just a century later,

the next revolution has begun

that could drastically transform how they're made,

what they're capable of, and what they look like.

A new evolution has begun

which could see roadways teaming with autonomous vehicles,

where pedals or steering wheels are a thing of the past.

Electric vehicles that charge in mere minutes

and cars that run exclusively on solar power

could be just on the horizon.

Some of the most innovative minds on the planet

are channeling their energy

into creating the cars of the future.

- I mean, there are people working on automated cars

like driverless cars, how to manage them on roads

through sensoring and signaling and through a point of like,

there used be a Bruce Willis movie, like Fifth Dimension,

things where he used to like fly cars around,

and things of that nature are not too far away.

- [Narrator] While the craziest concept vehicles

aren't available yet to drive,

there are a plethora of amazing electric vehicles

on the market today.

From Porsche's luxury Take Hand Turbo S

to the more affordable Chevrolet Bolt,

almost every major car company offers their own versions.

Electric vehicles are seeing a surge in global popularity

at a time in history

when nations are setting aggressive targets

in an effort to reduce global emissions.

- So in response to this,

and I think this is something that we see

both in the natural resources sector

and in with, you know, other technologies,

engineers are looking at other alternatives

to see how far we can push the sort of low carbon

or the greenness of our vehicles.

- [Narrator] There are 14 companies

that dominate the industry,

with factories all over the world

producing over 85 million vehicles in 2022.

In many of these factories, the construction is done

almost entirely by industrial robots.

This incredible feat of engineering

has been evolving since the 1960s.

Improving efficiency in automotive manufacturing

and eliminating safety risk for humans,

parts are added as the vehicles move through

an automatic assembly line to receive some finishing touches

until they're ready to hit the road.

- I think a lot of companies

are trying to be part of the change.

They see that this is where the future is headed,

and so all of them are trying to have a stake

in the electric vehicle market.

- [Narrator] This is all thanks to huge improvements

in battery tech, charging infrastructure,

and a major shift in public perception.

The automotive industry

is going through a rapid transformation.

These manufacturers don't just build cars,

they're also technology companies that write code

and create smart products.

The most cutting edge companies use autonomous tech

to identify defects in their assembly lines,

using predictive maintenance

to service and repair crucial welding machines

before disaster strikes.

Automated features also have a major impact on productivity,

allowing smart factories to build a massive volume of cars.

Automotive manufacturers

are one of the largest adopters of robots globally,

and their use of robots is only going to increase.

Technology is progressing in leaps and bounds,

and there is huge buzz around the future of EVs.

To the general public,

it might feel like electric cars are a relatively new thing,

but what most don't realize

is that at the turn of the 20th century,

there were actually more electric vehicles on the road

than gasoline powered vehicles.

In their heyday of the 1900s,

you were nearly twice as likely

to encounter an electric car on the road

than a gas powered one.

During the 1800s,

the early pioneers of electric mobility flourished.

Electric cars were appealing to the early innovators

as providing a cleaner, quieter alternative

to horse-drawn vehicles.

- We need to look back to 1859

where a French scientist by the name of Gaston Plante

first invented the very first battery that was rechargeable

and was a lead acid battery.

- [Narrator] A battery works by converting chemical energy

into electrical energy through a chemical reaction,

allowing the flow of electrons between its positive

and negative terminals to create an electric charge.

- [Nana] And that electric charge

then is what's used to power the vehicle.

So at the time that Gaston Plante

invented his lead acid battery,

what the battery looked like

was it was made of two spiral sheets of pure lead.

They were separated by a thin linen sheet,

and all this was immersed in a container of sulfuric acid.

- [Narrator] Plante's fundamental concepts

laid the groundwork

for the more practical lead acid batteries used today,

including the 12 volt installed in the world's

first mass produced hybrid electric vehicle,

the Toyota Prius.

The hybrid system allows the vehicle

to switch between using the internal combustion engine

and the electric motor

depending on driving conditions and power demands.

- The most ubiquitous hybrid has to be the Toyota Prius.

These were very common

and it sort of made the idea of the hybrid car

a very commonplace thing.

- [Narrator] At this time, most automakers

hadn't quite cracked the code on achieving the range

required to make electric or hybrid cars viable.

- At the same time as the Prius came out,

most of the other major automotive manufacturers

were working on variations of a hybrid

to varying degrees of success,

but nothing was as successful as the Toyota Prius.

It's probably the most prolific hybrid vehicle out there,

and was really a precursor

for how reliable an electric vehicle could be.

- [Narrator] The major obstacle was extending battery life,

but engineers working on the Prius

used a technique by breaking the battery

into a large number of smaller modules.

- That way nothing was ever being overcharged

and nothing was ever being totally depleted.

- [Narrator] But surprisingly,

the evolution of the electric vehicles

we see on the road today

can be traced to a historical gas guzzling sport.

As the top echelon of motor sports,

Formula One is a hotbed of technical development

and game changing innovation.

- [Paul] Anytime you pin people against one another

and make them compete where their stakes are high,

I feel like you extract from those people

the most innovative technologies.

And the Formula One system that's built

really pins people against each other,

causes them to compete,

causes them to be creative and work together,

and it creates some of the technologies

that we then transfer into the mass market.

- Underneath all the glitz and glamour of F-1,

millions of dollars are invested in the sport

to make the cars faster, stronger, safer,

more aerodynamic and technologically advanced.

A Formula One engine is an apex predator of the motor world,

with cylinders seeing 50,000 mini explosions

during a single lap to drive its pistons

and inside temperatures reaching 2,750 degrees centigrade.

But the innovation goes far beyond what's under the hood.

- So there's a lot of money

put into the racing industry

with a focus on research and development,

and there's so many different innovations and findings

because of this.

- [Paul] If we think of what our steering wheel

looks like today, it's got all these buttons on it.

We could control the radio

without ever having to let go of that steering wheel.

That really came from the fact that the Formula One driver

needed to be able to operate the various features of the car

without letting go of the steering wheel.

- [Narrator] Active suspension,

which controls the vertical movement of the wheels

using an array of computers and sensors

to ensure a smoother ride,

is just one of the many innovations born out of racing.

The 1992 Williams FW-14B revolutionized active suspension

and is now used by a range of cars on the road today.

Regenerative braking developed by curves

converts the energy of motion

when the car decelerates into electrical energy,

which is stored in a battery.

- When we use conventional brakes,

we actually convert all that kinetic energy

into heat and simply waste it.

So with regenerative braking,

instead of wasting that energy as heat,

we convert it back into electrical energy

and recharge batteries.

- [Narrator] Introduced in 2009

and now used in all electric vehicles on the road today.

But even Formula One engineers

have to nod back to those early pioneers

who first got us moving using energy

rather than foot or horsepower.

Incredible automobile innovations

can be traced all the way back to the late 1600s

to mark the innovation of the first steam powered vehicle,

which led to the creation

of the first steam powered automobile

capable of human transportation.

- These vehicles are extremely slow.

They have really unreliable steam engines.

They're actually not that practical.

- At the end of the 19th century,

the development of the motorcar

found itself at a crossroads.

Large numbers of engineers and innovative tinkerers

were experimenting with engine technologies of all types.

- We needed a new system, and that was really evident.

If you look at the late 19th century,

we had thousands of horses,

hundreds of thousands of horses in these cities.

I mean, it was just a nightmare

of horse urine and horse waste.

It was just horrible.

- [Narrator] As inventors began to branch out

at the end of the 19th century,

development would split off into three primary methods

for powering personal transportation:

electricity, steam, and liquid fuel.

- There were a number of small makers,

either carriage companies, or well, in Europe,

these were often bicycle companies

that were converting the technologies

that they knew like carriages into the automobile.

- [Narrator] For decades,

gas guzzling vehicles have ruled supreme,

but now with the onset of global warming

and the need to reduce our carbon emissions,

a reboot is needed.

- When we look specifically at electric vehicles today,

we're currently at what we will call a tipping point.

- [Narrator] One of the biggest pioneers

in the world of EVs is Tesla motors.

- In 2003, Tesla motors was formed,

and they did a couple of very transformative things.

- [Narrator] In 2006, the Silicon Valley startup

announced it would start producing

a luxury electric sports car

that could go more than 320 kilometers on a single charge,

which was completely unheard of.

Tesla unveiled their first production car in 2008,

the first to run lithium ion batteries

and to demonstrate this 320 kilometer driving range.

- A lot of that attractiveness to the Tesla vehicles

were how they were designed.

- [Steve] They really changed things

by altering what people thought of electric cars.

Up until that time,

electric cars were not very flashy looking,

but Tesla came along and promised luxury, range,

and most importantly, performance.

- Tesla not only showed that this design was feasible,

but also showed that this was attractive to the public.

- [Narrator] Although the cost of a Tesla car

can be prohibitive, automaker Nissan raised the competition

with its launch of the Nissan Leaf in 2010.

- When this came along,

it was more of a price friendly model of electric vehicle,

but promised a 200 kilometer range

on a fully charged battery.

- [Narrator] Powering the first model

was a 24 kilowatt hour lithium ion battery.

In 2018, the Leaf takes the crown

as the bestselling full use electric car in history.

- Although it would eventually be overtaken

by the Tesla Model Three.

- [Narrator] The Leaf was Nissan's guess

of what an electric car should be.

It would be a small city car and very well made,

but for many, it didn't add the excitement of driving.

The genius of Tesla's founder, Elon Musk,

was that he recognized

what would really launch the electric car.

It would be capable of going fast

and enhance the driving experience

with some radical technology at the driver's fingertips.

The Tesla Model X is considered to be

one of the coolest electric vehicles on the market,

merging functionality with luxury.

The standard Model X boasts 670 horsepower

and accelerates zero to 100 kilometers per hour

in around 3.8 seconds,

with some eye-catching features like its Falcon Wing doors.

But arguably, the most amazing innovation about this car

is its ability to drive itself.

- Tesla has always been very good for pushing the boundaries

of where automotive technology is these days.

- [Narrator] In 2015, Tesla rolled out autopilot,

allowing for full hands-free control

for highway and freeway driving.

This was the first time that semi-autonomous technology

of this level was being offered in a commercial vehicle.

- When Tesla unveiled their self-driving functionality,

it was really game changing.

It scared a lot of people

and it excited a lot of other people.

- [Narrator] One technological advancement

that made self-driving possible

arrived in the early 2000s, radar cruise control systems.

Where older cruise control systems

could maintain the car speed,

these new ones could also maintain

a safe distance to the car in front

without driver intervention.

- It actually monitored and controlled acceleration

and braking in a range that you could program,

and it was sort of ideal for highway driving.

- [Narrator] Even if the car changes its speed.

- [Steve] The vehicle would be able to monitor

if you were swaying from lanes,

it could hold itself in position,

and it would keep you a safe distance

depending on the speed you were driving

and how close you were to the car in front of you.

- [Narrator] It was through the pathbreaking

DARPA grand challenges of the mid 2000s that LIDAR emerged

as the key to safe and reliable autonomous navigation.

- LIDAR is basically a system that measures the distance

between the sensor and an object

using the time that the light travels

to go to the object and come back.

- [Narrator] The competition was created

to spur the development of technologies

needed to create the first fully autonomous ground vehicles

capable of completing a substantial off-road course

within a limited time.

- LIDAR is really using light like radar, similar to radar,

to build a map of what's going on around the vehicle.

It can look at what the road surface looks like ahead of it,

look at other vehicles, look at the roadway,

and build a map of its space

so the vehicle can understand what's around it

and react to that using the computer.

- [Narrator] This was the first time

that semi-autonomous technology of this level

was being offered in a commercial vehicle,

but to this day, both experts and the public remain split

on whether or not the technology

is ready to go to the next level.

- Tesla's autopilot system really is kind of that step

towards fully autonomous vehicles.

It's really a system

that determines what's going on in the environment around it

and responds to it.

So it really has the capacity to be almost fully autonomous.

In certain situations,

the driver's still going to have to provide input

'cause that system isn't perfect yet.

- [Narrator] Considered by some

to be the space race of our generation,

autonomous driving systems

are seen as a sort of holy grail of innovation

in the automotive industry, and even today,

there are more self-driving cars on the road

than people may realize.

- So when I think of autonomous vehicle,

I think of it on a scale of one to five.

- [Narrator] Tesla's autopilot can be classified

as a level two automation.

Level two automation

is like an advanced version of cruise control.

The car can take some safety actions automatically,

but the driver must stay alert at the wheel.

- [Paul] Cruise control was probably one of the first ways

we started to automate the driving process,

and it was simply a tool

that allowed us to keep a consistent speed

as we drove down a certain long stretch of road.

- [Narrator] There were several fatal crashes in 2018

involving autonomous vehicles,

one including a level four AV.

- When we designed cars,

we almost assume they will at some point be in an accident,

and so we design those cars with that in mind.

- [Narrator] A level four automation level

means that the car can mostly drive itself

without any human input, but maybe incapable of operating

in unmapped areas or during severe weather.

One major consequence of these fatalities

has been a steep decline in public trust in EVs,

which persists today.

- A lot of people think that older cars,

very long or very rigid cars

were what we needed to have for safety,

but it's the complete opposite.

- [Narrator] There has yet to be a production vehicle

that is capable of level five autonomy,

which is full automation in all conditions,

but thanks to an increase in technological advancements,

there are cars on the road today

that are capable of level three autonomy,

which is actually pretty close to what many people consider

to be a fully self-driving vehicle.

Level three autonomy uses AI

and other driver assistance systems

to make decisions based on changing situations

around the vehicle.

Although the technology can run unsupervised,

a human driver is required

to take over at the wheel if needed.

- I think that we can move towards

adapting to that level of technology,

but there's a lot more work that needs to be done.

There's a possibility that the risk might move

from the passengers inside the vehicles

to the pedestrians out on the street.

- We figured out how to drive a car at a consistent speed,

which required us to figure out how to accelerate the car,

and you know, required us to figure out

how to decelerate the car when needed,

let's say going up or down hills.

We had to maintain that consistent speed.

So I think the natural progression was that,

hey, if we know how to accelerate

and decelerate a car already,

why don't we put some detectors in the front of that car

that will detect the presence of some objects

that might require us to decelerate quickly,

and that evolution of slowing down as we approach a risk

started to take shape.

- [Narrator] Companies have been experimenting

with automated driving systems for almost a century.

In 1926, Houdina radio control operated the 1926 Chandler

using radio impulses on the streets of New York,

allowing remote control

of some of the functions of the vehicle.

20 years later, engineer Ralph Teeter

invented the first modern cruise control.

He spent 10 years experimenting with this device,

paving the way for present day GPS driving directions.

In the 1950s and 60s,

RCA labs and the Ohio State University

also ran promising trials with their autonomous tech.

In 1961, with the space race

between the USA and USSR in full swing,

researchers began to ponder landing vehicles on the moon.

- Similar to electric vehicles

where there's this conception that they're a new technology,

autonomous cars or autonomous vehicles

also were experimented with earlier in the 20th century,

and in this area, we're seeing knowledge transfer

between different industries.

So the Lunar rover's a great example

where technology used to automate

and drive a vehicle remotely

is something that can then be transferred

and adopted and adapted into consumer vehicles.

- [Narrator] The idea of a remote control lunar rover

was put forward by James Adams,

a graduate student at Stanford Engineering.

He created the world's first

truly self-driving wheeled vehicle, known as the Cart.

Tricked out with cameras,

the Cart was programmed to autonomously detect

and follow a line on the ground.

This was the first use of cameras in autonomous vehicles,

a vital element in the autonomous vehicles of today.

- Mainstream automakers

wouldn't get involved with autonomous vehicles

until the late 1990s.

- [Narrator] But that didn't stop them

from creating futuristic concepts for a fantastical world

where our cars drive themselves.

- So looking back at the initial designs

for the autonomous vehicles,

they were different

from anything the public had ever seen before.

Some would even say they looked like living rooms on wheels.

- [Narrator] Norman Bel Geddes

is credited with creating the first self-driving car,

which was an electric vehicle

guided by radio controlled electromagnetic fields

generated with magnetized metal spikes

embedded in the roadway.

His concept was shown off in a GM exhibit in 1939,

and by 1958, General Motors had made this concept a reality.

Then in 1964, GM unveiled the Firebird four

at its Futurama exhibit at the New York World's Fair.

- The concept of the Firebird four

had features like self-driving,

and it could drive itself on highways,

it could turn on its own,

and things that are kind of more common

in what we think of as autonomous vehicles today.

Despite the fact that this happened in the mid '60s,

you know, we're kind of living these realities now.

Some maybe lesser practical items

were a foldout refrigerator and some TV screens, but I mean,

we already kind of have TV screens in some of the,

you know, more modern electric cars now.

So maybe we're not so far away from refrigerators.

- [Emily] The Firebird certainly wasn't a practical vehicle,

but I think what it speaks to

is what people thought the future of driving would be.

So it was very much a living space on wheels.

Autonomous vehicles today

don't really embody those same features,

and so that's where you see the difference

and maybe the distinction

between what people think the future will be

versus the reality of those situations and scenarios.

- [Narrator] Another crazy concept car

is the Ford Airstream,

a retro-futuristic crossover utility vehicle.

In 2007, the first Airstream

debuted at the North American Auto Expo in Detroit.

The modern version operates exclusively on electric power

using a hybrid hydrogen fuel cell,

which could be the green energy of the future.

Today, more and more car companies

are honing in on green energy as a power source,

and the most common green vehicles

are electric cars running on batteries.

- Most of the batteries that we use today

are based on lithium ion technology.

They replaced the nickel metal hydride batteries

that were in the early versions

of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles.

The lithium batteries are intrinsically lighter,

and they have high energy density.

So the critical thing here

is to be able to increase the density of energy storage

inside the vehicle to the highest extent possible.

- [Narrator] Batteries are the new gold rush

as far as automakers are concerned.

Better, more powerful batteries

will drive widespread use of electric cars,

but there are some caveats,

one being that lithium can be described

as a non-renewable mineral

that makes renewable energy possible,

and some experts tout it as the next oil.

While lithium is relatively abundant in the earth's crust,

commercially viable deposits

that could be economically extracted are limited,

and the rate at which new lithium deposits are formed

is much slower

than the rate at which lithium is being extracted.

However, broadly speaking,

electric cars produce significantly fewer

planet warming emissions than most cars fueled by gasoline.

- From the 1980s onward, we started really realizing

that our CO2 emissions

were having a huge impact on the planet.

We started having global warming.

As CO2 levels have built up on earth,

we've seen more and more adverse effects,

and we will continue to see these effects into the future.

They're not solved in the short run.

To try and change, we need to move away from fossil fuels,

and this is why currently there's a huge push

to go back to battery electric vehicles.

These vehicles don't release CO2,

they're much more environmentally friendly,

and they really help us solve the global warming crisis.

- The problem monster that's creeping up in battery

is the fact that we are refining

every critical metal in the world now,

which we never touched.

Sirium, lanthanum, actinides, scandium,

manganese, nickel, cobalt,

things that we never knew existed except on a periodic table

are now being mined for our cell phones,

for our berries, for every,

we don't even know the effect of that.

- [Narrator] Ironically, to move to a greener future,

the extraction of the minerals we need

contributes to local soil degradation, water shortages,

biodiversity loss, and damage to ecosystem functions.

- We naturally produce waste because we take the ore,

which has a relatively small amount

of the elements that we want, we extract those elements,

and then what we have left is not of value.

We need to do that in a way

such that the leftover material is benign,

so we don't introduce into it things that are damaging.

- [Narrator] While lithium mining is not perfect,

ultimately it is cleaner than coal extraction,

and there are some really exciting solutions in the works

that could improve the efficiency

and maybe even eliminate the need

for lithium mining in the future.

- Another challenge is how these lithium ion batteries

are disposed of when the car is no longer in use.

I think it's important to find ways to dispose of them

in a more environmentally friendly way,

and there's still a challenge around that currently.

- [Narrator] Those challenges have always been faced

when new technologies have been developed.

Back in the early 1900s,

the search for renewable automotive energy solutions

would unite two of the best known innovators in history.

Around the late 19th century, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison

teamed up to combine the power of their brilliant minds,

and while the public was aware of their collaborations,

their first project was a little known bombshell,

the creation of the world's first electric car.

- The two were essentially trying to find an efficient

and usable battery for, you know, Ford's automobiles.

- [Narrator] Despite a lot of big promises,

the development of Edison's battery

was costly and unsuccessful.

They had very high internal resistance.

They were too big, very expensive,

and released hydrogen when charging, which is dangerous.

Essentially, they were incapable of powering

an electric car at the time.

Ford backed out of the collaboration.

It had already cost him $40 million,

equivalent of an investment over $1.5 billion today.

- And so pulling all of that money

and sort of ending the research

and experimentation altogether

really set back the potential for electric vehicles.

- [Narrator] Another problem with early EV development

was that electricity was only available in cities,

limiting rural residents

from using this new type of vehicle.

The Texas oil boom in the early 20th century

was an absolute game changer.

Gasoline became cheap and attainable for all,

and powered by the easy access to gasoline,

Ford shifted his mission to building a transport system

based on this conventional fuel.

Cheap, abundant gasoline and continued improvements

to the internal combustion engine

hampered demand for alternative fuel vehicles

and solidified gasoline vehicles' dominance.

- [Vanessa] Because of this, the Ford Motor Company

wouldn't try to make another electric vehicle

until almost a century later.

- [Narrator] After the death of the electric car

in the early 1900s,

the majority of automakers and engineers

focused their efforts on the combustion engine.

- The competition from the alternate ways of mobility,

which is done by the fossil fuel burning

and internal combustion engine inventions

and things of that nature,

and the reasons that the energy that those gave

were phenomenally higher

than the energies the batteries gave.

- I think if the Texas oil boom didn't happen,

there would've been more need to keep pushing

with the advancements of electric vehicles

and seeing how we can steer in that direction.

- [Narrator] Today, car technology is evolving

at incredible speeds, however, these developments again

are being propelled by the racing world,

but this time, not Formula One, but Formula E,

the E standing for electric.

- Formula E has demonstrated

what the future of electric vehicles could look like.

- [Narrator] Car makers including Porsche, Jaguar,

and Mercedes have looked to Formula E as a test bed

in which to develop cutting edge technology

that can be fed straight back into the factory.

When Formula E was first introduced,

cars would have to be charged in the middle of the race.

After four years of innovations

and improvements in the energy density of the cells

used in the battery pack,

Formula E gen two cars saw a drastic improvement in range.

Third generation cars' regenerative braking systems

can feed back more than 40%

of the energy used during the race.

New chargers with a 160 kilowatt capacity

will be capable of charging two cars at the same time.

The mind-blowing electric vehicles we see today

are radically different from the first EVs on the road,

especially in the United Kingdom.

Since the 1930s, the British people have had their milk

and other dairy products delivered by electric.

- So the milk floats were designed to deliver fresh milk,

and they were used in the UK.

The Express Dairy company was the first to use milk floats,

and that was in 1932.

- The milk float is essentially a delivery van,

but the goods that it's delivering are milk.

And so these were quite popular in the UK,

and similar to current electric fleets

that you see grocery stores using

or delivery services using,

there are areas where technology can be adopted quite early

because of the repetitive

kind of necessary motions of these vehicles.

- [Narrator] Their experiments with a small fleet

of GV electric vehicles in London proved successful

and led to the replacement of horse drawn milk floats.

- They had batteries that could save the charge

for quite long time for the whole trip,

and it was on for quite a long time.

But the way we are thinking about electric vehicles now

for passengers probably is something new

or a project that is restarted after like 100 years, right,

after almost 100 years being started.

- [Narrator] Although some traditional milk floats

are used in the UK today,

the more modern ones are still electric,

traveling more than 14 miles per year.

That's 556 times around the world.

As power sources of cars continue to evolve,

so do their designs.

Augmented reality allows engineers to see

how their most cutting edge ideas

could come together in a vehicle

without having to enter a factory assembly line.

This futuristic method of design

allows engineers to build virtual prototypes

which can reduce costs and improve vehicle safety.

They can also make adjustments quickly and easily,

saving time, money, and material.

Today, one company is bringing

the most futuristic car concept into reality.

California-based company Alef

is developing the world's first real flying car.

Designed for street driving like a regular vehicle,

what makes it truly revolutionary

is the car's ability to raise up vertically on a dime,

soaring above traffic accidents

and other obstacles on the road.

Lifting straight up to towards the clouds,

this incredible car flies forward

until the desired destination is reached.

During flight, the driver and cabin are stabilized

using a unique rotating gimbal design.

This flying car is not only super cool, but super clean.

The current model is 100% electric,

and a hydrogen powered option may be offered as well

with an extended drive and flight range.

Following four years of R and D, research and development,

the first full-size prototype

was successfully flown in 2019,

bringing a space-age dream of flying cars

one step closer to reality.

With vehicles like these in the works,

it's hard not to imagine a future where all cars can fly.

However, flying cars and high-tech vehicles

that are on the road today could never exist

without the decades long development

of highly advanced and very tiny computers.

- [Vanessa] Looking at the evolution that computers have had

over the decades, going from very large scale equipment

to more compact style devices,

that has also trickled down to the automotive industry

where they're looking to make more compact style cars.

- [Narrator] These days, every element of our lives

is powered by some sort of computer.

Even Bluetooth headphones have microprocessors in them now.

There is perhaps no industry

where this trend is more tangible

than the automotive industry.

- When these futuristic concept cars in the mid '60s

were being developed,

we were relying on like cathode ray tube technology.

But as we progressed, we developed the microchip.

- [Narrator] Before the microchip,

electronics relied on a three electrode vacuum tube,

allowing breakthrough inventions like radio,

television, and computers to become a reality.

But the vacuum tube was fragile, bulky,

power hungry, and expensive.

As early as the 1930s,

scientists sought a better alternative,

leading to the invention of the mighty microchip.

- So we can have a tiny amount of silicone

or germanium semiconductor, and we can manufacture,

build every piece of hardware on one substrate,

and it became very, very small.

- [Narrator] Each microchip is made up

of a crystalline semiconductor

stacked with huge numbers of microscopic transistors

and other miniature electronic devices.

- The miniaturization of components unlocked the ability

to add a lot more features

that we could never imagine adding before.

- [Narrator] The first chips in cars

were used to manage simple functions

like fuel injection and transmissions shifting.

Today's chips are used to handle everything

from locking doors and calculating fuel efficiency

to emergency braking, traction control,

and automatic parking.

They're absolutely critical for use in autonomous vehicles.

- When we started out, in order to to accelerate the car,

you had literally the pedal moving a valve

that would move a little rod

that would open another little valve

and add more fuel to the system.

Everything was fully mechanical.

Now, when we touch that accelerator pedal,

it's actually just sensing

the distance that we've depressed it

and doing everything else electronically.

- [Narrator] For autonomous vehicles to become the norm,

so much information must be gathered in real time

such as traffic conditions, events, weather conditions,

road signs, traffic signals, and others.

This requires massive data processing,

high trillions of operations per second.

Today, tests on autonomous vehicles

are being run all over the world.

Companies like Hyundai and Kia

have joined other manufacturers

designing level three autonomous vehicles,

the Genesis G90 and the V9.

The Genesis G90 boasts a turbocharged 3.5 liter V6 engine,

capable of reaching 409 horsepower

using an electric supercharger.

With a high output engine under its hood,

the G90 can rocket to 60 miles per hour in 5 seconds.

And the Genesis G90 is the first vehicle

with level three autonomous driving in Korea.

Industry heavyweights are predicting that by 2030,

half of all new cars on the road

will be capable of level three autonomous driving.

But we have to keep in mind

that it's not all about the technology of a specific car

when it comes to autonomy.

Whether or not you can drive a level three car

down your street depends a lot on regulations,

and it's taken a long time to get to where we are today.

Up until the '70s,

the internal combustion engine had basically won over EVs,

but a major historical event was on the horizon

that would drastically alter the future of car engineering.

- The auto industry doesn't like to do things

unless they have to.

So similarly to how there was an oil boom,

in 1973, there was an oil embargo.

Now all of a sudden, the shoe was on the other foot.

It was much more expensive to power gasoline cars,

and so the electric vehicle rose again.

- [Narrator] During the 1970s oil crisis,

Stanley Whittingham,

an English chemist working for ExxonMobil at the time,

started exploring the idea of a new battery,

one that can recharge on its own in a short amount of time

and perhaps lead to fossil free energy one day.

In his first attempt, he tried using titanium disulfide

and lithium metal as the electrodes,

but the combination posed several challenges,

including serious safety concerns.

After the battery short-circuited and caught on fire,

the experiment was called off,

but the gauntlet had been thrown down,

and scientists across the world started experiments

to get the right metals to work together

to create the perfect battery.

John B Goodenough, an engineering professor

at the University of Texas at Austin, had another idea.

In the 1980s, he experimented using lithium cobalt oxide

as the cathode instead of titanium disulfide,

which paid off.

The battery doubled its energy potential.

- Between the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s,

we really saw the evolution of lithium batteries.

Lithium is really an interesting element, it's very light.

It's the third element on the periodic table,

so it's really low density.

That's really advantageous for batteries

because it makes them light.

- [Narrator] Five years later, Akira Yoshino

of Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan made another swap.

Instead of using reactive lithium metal as the anode,

he tried using a carbonaceous material, petroleum coke,

which led to a revolutionary finding.

Not only was the new battery significantly safer

without lithium metal,

the battery performance was more stable.

- We discovered different systems of electrolytes

like lithium polymer batteries that are much safer

and much less likely to fail.

We also incorporated various design considerations

into those products, into the battery packs

to make them less likely to leak and catch fire.

- [Narrator] These three major breakthroughs

came together to produce the first prototype

of the lithium ion battery as we know it,

which has changed the world.

- [Robert] So there's been a lot of development

of technology over the last four decades

really to get us to the point where we are today

in that we have relatively high power,

lightweight batteries that are still safe.

- [Narrator] The act of simply driving an electric vehicle

doesn't produce any emissions,

and that is definitely a win.

But to really get a sense

of the full environmental impact of an EV,

you need to look at the whole picture.

- [Steve] One future burden that electric cars may place

on our current infrastructure is just on the power grid.

If everybody has an electric car

and everybody is charging their cars,

let's say at nighttime,

that's gonna be a real burden on the electric grid

that I don't think we're currently capable of dealing with.

- [Narrator] Where the electricity

charging your EV comes from makes a big difference

when it comes to EV environmental impact.

- So some of the limitations

with the electric vehicles right now

revolve around how to power the car.

Right now there's charging stations,

but they're not as accessible

and widespread as your gas stations.

So those are the challenges

a lot of people are facing right now with electric vehicles.

- [Narrator] Many local electricity grids

are still powered by coal.

They need to get much, much cleaner

before electric vehicles are truly emissions free.

- With the current issues faced

with mining lithium-ion materials,

I think it's worth looking into different types of power.

- [Narrator] One possible solution, solar energy.

Whether it's a solar panel setup at home

or solar panels installed on top of a car,

the majority of future EVs could be solar powered.

- [Vanessa] Solar power might be

a more friendly type of power to use

because it could be as simple

as just leaving your car outside to absorb the solar energy,

and that could help you power your car

for the rest of the day.

- [Narrator] Sunlight is converted directly into energy

in a system known as photovoltaic charging,

and its popularity is rapidly increasing.

The world's first commercial solar-electric vehicles

are hitting the US

and European markets in the next few years.

- My idea of the design of a conventional solar powered car

would be maybe having solar panels at the roof of the car

that are maybe embedded into the design

so it doesn't look too bulky

and still gives people that sleek look.

- [Narrator] Solar panels are so inexpensive,

and integrating them into the skin of a car is so easy,

it's hard to envision this won't be cost effective.

Some companies are producing electric vehicles

with integrated solar panels,

which can harness the sun's power

to provide around 15 to 45 additional miles on a clear day,

or their vehicles could be fueled by what's underneath them.

- As we look to the future of electric vehicles,

we need to find solutions

that are gonna allow for faster charging times.

- [Robert] We can put induction charging systems

in our roadways.

We now have many cell phones

that can be inductively charged.

Basically, our pad generates an electromagnetic field

that then is able to charge our phone.

We can actually do that with cars.

We can embed these systems in highways

so that you drive down a 10 kilometer section of road,

the battery gets charged up by induction

while you're driving over that section of roadway,

and then for the next 100 kilometers, discharges.

So you could have a system

that allows you to drive from New York to Florida

without having to stop every two and a half hours

to charge your Tesla for three hours.

- [Narrator] With new battery technologies,

we are also seeing massive improvements in range

and a decrease in EV battery costs,

which brings a lot of promise

for the future of the industry.

- Prior to 2015, we really didn't have

great battery technology

to allow mass electrification of vehicles.

That technology has developed

really quickly in the last decade,

and we now can do it relatively easily

and relatively low cost.

- [Narrator] The Ford F-150

has been America's best-selling vehicle for nearly 50 years,

and to many, it represents power, hard work, and grit.

A callback to one of Henry Ford's first

and most ambitious projects,

the Ford F-150 has now gone electric.

The Lightning F-150

changed what's under the hood dramatically,

but promises to deliver that same power

with electric technology.

- We see a large number of manufacturers

producing electric vehicles now,

from the Ford F-150 Lightning electric vehicle to Teslas

to Mercedes, to Porsche, to lower cost vehicles

like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt.

So this is really becoming a popular way

of powering vehicles.

- The future of electric vehicles is very exciting

because looking at how far it's come,

there's still so much room for improvement.

There's still so much room for advancement.

- [Narrator] The promise of driverless technology

has long been enticing.

It has the potential to transform our experience

of commuting and long journeys,

take people out of high risk work environments,

and streamline our industries.

- A lot of our vehicle technology

is designed to keep people safe when they drive.

So cars have to be over designed.

They're heavier than they need to be.

They have a lot more technology in them than we would need

because we can't rely on the people who drive them

to always drive safely.

- [Narrator] It's key to helping us build

the cities of the future

and paving the way for more sustainable ways of living

where our relationship with cars are redefined.

Not to mention it could make our travel safer.

- The development of autonomous driving technology

is still in its early stages.

It's already pretty darn good.

I mean, you read in the paper sometimes about an accident

where an autonomous vehicle has run into something.

That happens one time, it makes the news.

Whereas with human-driven vehicles,

that's happening every day, all the time,

and we don't even think about it.

So in a world where all vehicles are autonomous,

we can rely on that technology for crash avoidance

and we'll no longer have to build vehicles

to withstand high speed crashes.

And that will mean we can dramatically reduce

the weight of vehicles, and a lot of the safety features

that are currently built into

our current vehicle technologies.

- I think to achieve the idealized end goal

of self-driving cars, we have to make some concessions.

I don't think it's reasonable

to fully rework our infrastructure,

but I do think we're going to need to have something

like a smart road or sensors placed

throughout more common busy traffic streets

so that cars are getting feedback

from the infrastructure itself.

- [Narrator] But the next big hurdle

would be mastering the ability

for the computers in cars to talk to each other.

- Nowadays, cars are very connected

thanks to the internet of things.

This includes stereo advancements, navigation systems,

and many more things.

- [Narrator] The internet of things, IOT,

is crucial for many aspects of our modern day cars,

including driver assistance systems,

infotainment, navigation, and predictive maintenance,

and the general concept of connectivity.

Before the internet,

the concept of connected cars was unfathomable.

But today, practically every new car is a connected car

contributing to a larger network of connected devices

and machines that will change the way we live our lives.

- In 20 or 30 years,

we're basically gonna have extreme weather all the time,

and eventually we'll run out of fossil fuels.

We need to change what we're doing.

So electric vehicles are not just a temporary thing,

they're an inevitability, this is going to happen.

So the next wave of cars in the next 30 years,

they're all going to be electric.

We really don't have a choice.

[exciting music]