Morphing car skins a taste of what’s to come in the future of cars

Imagine a car that that can accelerate faster simply by changing its outer body texture. It may sound like something out of a superhero movie, but researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with futuristic material they are calling smart morphable surface, also known as smorph, that may one day do just that.

Their first steps in developing this futuristic technology have been to create a golf-ball like object as a proof-of concept. The ball has an internal structure made of squishy, rubbery material, covered by a more rigid plastic-like exterior. When air is sucked out of the centre of the ball, instead of wrinkling, the outer skin magically forms dimples.What makes smorphs even more versatile is that the pattern of the dimples can be controlled by varying the thickness of the outer skin.

Testing their franken-golfball in a wind tunnel, they discovered that, much like their sporty counterparts, the dimpled balls were noticeably more aerodynamic, exhibiting less drag. However as the speed increased, smoother skins offered higher speeds. Researchers at this point in their tests realized that these physical properties of smorphs would particularly be suited to designing cars to be more fuel efficient. A car's outer shell would have more dimples at lower speeds and become smoother as it goes faster.

Hopes are to one day scale-up smorphs for use in not only vehicles but in buildings too. For now, there remain challenges in adapting the material to less curved surfaces, so it may be decades away before it hits the automotive market.

Since many people spend so much of their time outside of work and home in a car, it's no surprise that smoprhs are just one of the innovative concepts that the auto industry has up its sleeve.

Some of the top innovations that may totally transform our driving experience in the coming years include Google’s self-driving cars, which the Internet giant has been testing for a while now.

Both California and Nevada state governments have officially given their blessings to have the self-driving cars on their roads.

While the technology is not quite at the point to where you can get into your car and let the computer drive while you catch up on your emails, it will soon have collision avoidance and automated braking systems. The first generation of these smart systems are already on the market, but the limiting factor some industry experts predict moving forward will be gaining consumer confidence so that they are willing to hand over their keys to their autonomous cars.

Self-driving cars do however promise to lower incidences of pulsing traffic jams, conserve energy and lower accident rates.

With all our advances and reliance on our digital mobile devices. another big push in the car market in the near future will be digital and transparent dashboards. Transparent OLED displays will allow drivers to see road conditions but with a see-through instrument panel. Computer giant Apple has plans of creating digital car dashboards decked out with touch screens and even lasers and cameras that can track eye and head movement.

Finally, it's what may be the craziest idea yet from a car manufacturer: A car grown in the lab. Mercedes has an audacious concept car for the far future they are calling ‘the Biome’ where organically grown car panels would be made from genetically modified trees. The material called biofibre, would be lighter than plastic and metals but stronger than steel, yet be completely biodegradable.

And if this doesn’t sound crazy enough the car actually is grown from two plant seeds, one for the interior and one for the exterior and uses plant juice as fuel.

I wonder if this means if you would need to water it and put it in the sun before you can harvest your car for driving? Definitely weird but cool.

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