naishou

It's hard to be an evangelist for the environment when you drive around in a WRX. My excuse is that I do fewer than 10,000km per year, and these days probably under 5,000. When I was in the UK recently I had a 1.0L, 3 cylinder Vauxhall Corsa, and let me tell you that in its own way this thing was a supercar. It went just fine down the motorways at 80-85mph (130km/h) and used under 5L of fuel per 100km. If I drove a lot I could see myself making do with that on environmental and financial grounds, though many of course wouldn't.

Whether you care about global warming and your impact on it or not is only one part of the issue though. Arguably a more serious problem is what happens when demand for energy, and in particular oil, exceeds supply. People have been predicting a peak in oil supply for decades, and we always seem to find new reserves. But now the experts are almost unanimous. Exploration is so thorough and extraction technology is so good that there's nowhere else to go. Global oil production will peak most likely in the next 3 years and almost certainly within 10. Some say it already has (2000 was the record year). With China, India and the rest of the developing world wanting what the rest of us have, and our own demand rising inexorably thanks to ever more and ever bigger cars and ever more air conditioners, it doesn't take a genius to see what's going to happen if we don't find alternatives and start seriously conserving soon. The oil crises of the 70s will look insignificant by comparison. So, no matter what your attitude to the environment is, the cost of oil is going to have a major impact on your habits 20 years from now, even if at the moment everything seems just lovely. If you love crude mechanical devices that burn excessive amounts of fossilised stuff in order to go fast (I always think our decendants will laugh incredulously at this) you'd better enjoy them while you can.

hlau

I think the fundamentals for the supercars in 20yrs time will still be the same as what we are striving for now.

1) Efficiency (lighter, stronger, smoother) It will depend alot on the technological advancement in material development in the coming years. From the pace we are developing alternate fuel replacement, I doubt we'll see a supercar running on alternate energy source in just 20yrs time. I think a even more efficient version of 'VTEC' or equivalent will be a more realistic trend. However, I really doubt we can ever develop a 'supercar' that is environmental friendly.

2) Safety - I think more emphasis will be placed on preventing accidents. Current ABS, stability control, traction control will become even smarter and more sophisticated. There will be more and more sensors as the CPU becomes more and more powerful. The intuition, skill and reflex that a professional racer has will simply be programmed and incoporated into the computer management system.

3) Comfort - look at how Lambos and Ferrari have become nowadays. Supercars are definitely becoming easier to drive and more user friendly.

Just an interesting thought, I wonder how many S2K will still be around in 20yrs time.