We are entering the last year of the first full century of the car almost as mystified about the future of private transport as our forebears were when they clunked around in the first de Dion Boutons.
Hogwash, some will say in response, pointing to the reams of research going on into the subject. In my defence is an observation by John Smith, a former General Motors chairman, that two-thirds of the world's storehouse of knowledge had been acquired in less than 40 years since the end of the second World War.
In the space of a further 15 years, we have probably acquired half as much again. Just as the rich a century ago never envisaged motorways and the great unwashed driving in air-conditioned comfort in their millions, the solutions to the urban jams and other motorised miseries of the next century may well take entirely unexpected forms.
Some of the innovations due in the next 12 months, and others unveiled in the past 12, underline that our knowledge is expanding so fast that the engineer who claims to know how cars will look or be powered or used even two decades hence is deluding himself.
Considered individually, these innovations do not a revolution make. Only when they are combined will their true significance emerge.
Take some examples. In spring, Rover, BMW's subsidiary, will launch its new 75 executive car with an integrated telephone and a choice of two satellite navigation systems. At about the same time, Jaguar will start producing its long-awaited S-type with similar technology plus a sophisticated on-board voice recognition system. The driver will be able to operate telephone, air conditioning, radio and CD just by speaking.
The new flagship MercedesBenz S-class is the first commercially available car in the world to have "adaptive" cruise control: on-board radar automatically keeps the car a safe distance from the vehicle in front while cruising on the autobahn. But Mercedes, Ford and Delphi, General Motors components arm, will be demonstrating more radical technology already at the prototype stage: collision avoidance using radar, laser and other sensing systems, which automatically brake and steer the car out of trouble.
Cadillac, GM's upmarket marque, will be introducing a combination of airbag sensors, onboard transmitter and satellite navigation system. If a driver crashes and is knocked out, the car automatically signals a GM control centre and emergency services with the crash location to within four metres.
Later this year, Cadillac De Ville models will have a night-vision system based on infra-red thermal imaging technology used by the military. It will allow a driver to "see" in the dark three to five times further than using conventional headlights, cutting the risks of night-time driving.
Another prospective technological advance is worth noting: Internet in the car. Visteon, Ford's components subsidiary, and Delphi are working with information technology groups, including Microsoft, to provide full Internet access from the car. This would allow drivers every type of activity from downloading database information for a businessman's on-board computer to running the bath at home.
In the shadow of Brussels's Atomium exhibition building is a house of the future, funded by the EU. Almost every household chore, from closing curtains to running a bath, is controlled by a microprocessor. Within the next 12 months, says Visteon, prototype on-car Internet systems will be able to run that bath while the driver is still 20 miles from home. Put all these technologies together, plus a few others unseen, and the remarkable becomes the revolutionary.
In combination, they bring closer to reality what only recently was generally unthinkable: the self-driving car. It is no longer fantasy to talk of a driver - a potentially redundant term - jumping into his car, issuing voice commands about where he or she wants to go, before settling down to some work while the car tootles safely to its destination.
This capability is important not least for governments agonising over how to deal with urban congestion and pollution as well as moving commuters, at least, on to public transport. What hope can there be of weaning commuters from their cars if they can spend time constructively in a traffic jam?
As for pollution, another technological leap is due in the next two to three months, when Ford puts on the road what it claims is the first medium-sized car powered by a fuel cell to undergo "real world" testing. The cell, developed by a partnership between Canadian research group Ballard, Daimler-Benz and Ford, generates non-polluting power from hydrogen and oxygen. By the end of the year, the partners will know if putting fuel-cell vehicles on the market by 2004 is feasible.
Technology trials for external control of a vehicle are taking place in Tilburg in the Netherlands. The Dutch Ministry of Transport, under an EU research programme aimed at cutting road deaths, is experimenting with a roadside beacon system that sends a signal to specially equipped cars entering the town's 30 kph zones.
The signal is picked up by an on-board chip that instructs the car's engine management system to slow the car to exactly that speed - irrespective of the driver's wishes.
