Cars of the Future

If a car isn’t burning precious natural resources and clogging the lungs of small children with noxious, cancerous tar then what good are they? You might as well be on a bicycle! So who the hell would buy an electric car? What kind of pathetic loser would you have to be to get rid of your huge pedestrian-cruncher or midlife-crisis-mobile? What, are you going to ride a bus like some kind of peasant? How will anyone know how big your cock is, unless you drink diesel like lemonade and tear down the road like a bull making sweet, sweet love to a lion – deep and noisy.

...and sensual.

After the click we'll find out about the other, correct side of the argument.



Some people just need to get around. We need an affordable, reliable method of transport and we don’t care what it is, as long as we’re not stuck at night on an abandoned road in the middle of nowhere while we’re trying to get home from work, with rabid wolves and rape-crazy inbred farmers circling in the darkness. But hell, if I can’t indulge some rhetoric then I’ll never have any fun.

Well, the folks at SmartCar sat down some time last year and decided that the kind of pathetic loser who’d give all that up is all of them. In this advert, dated on Youtube as September 2011, we run the entire list of Gadgets For Geeks:

Hoverboards, eh? Okay, you have my attention, advert, I would really like a- oh, available in 2063? That means I’ve only got about fifty years or so. I’ll set my damn alarm clock!

A hoverboard isn’t massively useful, but it looks like the kind of terrifying fun my great-grand-nephew will probably be into, the irresponsible little bastard. I should probably put my name down for a pre-order. Oh, hyperdrive too? Now I don’t know what you’re selling, advert. But I’m betting it’s neither a hyperdrive nor a hoverboard. I’ve been burned by this scam before! Damn that time-travelling Nigerian prince!

A flying broom! Ha, I get it now, they’re speaking to us geeks. Anyone who wanted a hoverboard or Millenium Falcon or anyone who ever read Harry Potter. The wizard’s license bit is a very cute touch.

Also anyone who’s ever wanted a teleporter. Like I said, the demographic for this advert is all the geeks. At this stage we’re all geeks. You have our attention! Yes, I want a damn hover-hyper-broom-teleporter! What am I buying from you people?!
 

Should I be worried that we never saw the girl come out of the teleporter?

What the devil is a ‘Sunspeed Superfast’? Some kind of starship? Is that what I’m buying? At this stage the music is so epic and the product is so universally appealing that I’m drooling over my keyboard. The poor thing has enough bodily fluids to tolerate as it is! Is the Sunspeed Superfast good? It had better be, since I will now pay literally anything for it, and since it came out nearly 1000 years after the hyperdrive and hoverboard! I’ve seen a lot of overclocked starships in my time, and most of them end up getting turned into neutronium or large, strangely-blobby explosion effects, but this one looks really good.

OH! I’m buying a god damn car. Surprise, geeks are into Smart cars. An electric car, which is interesting, but now I really want a Sunspeed Superfast with hyperdrive, teleporters and backwards compatibility for magic brooms. If it means I get one, I will personally visit the house of every gas-guzzler and EDIT: convince their owners peacefully (without violence!) that they should sensibly research and invest in more eco-friendly transport solutions. I’ll bring leaflets.

Electric cars are coming in this year. I admit that the most I know about modern cars comes from when I watch the guys on Top Gear set fire to something or offend a notable nation, but it feels like a slow paradigm shift. Check out this advert for the Nissan LEAF:

ARGH A PETROL-POWERED DENTIST DRILL!! Well, that’s a new nightmare to look forward to.

And now this one for Renault’s Z.E.:

(that’s actually the name. Zed Eee)

Similar, aren’t they? Indistinguishable even. But one is for Nissan and the other for Renault! What’s going on here?! Well, they’re both a product of the Renault-Nissan Alliance who claim to have been leading the charge in zero-emission engines for over a decade. Despite how awesomely steampunk the everyday petrol-powered devices look, there’s no denying that they get the point across: petrol engines have always been ridiculous, and are growing obsolete.

As an ecologically aware hippy, this is what I’ve been waiting years for. However as a geek I want a god damn Sunscreen Superwarp or whatever it was and to hell with this planet – I’M OUTTA HERE!

*ZOOM*

PS: Click here for more about other Cars of the Future.