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Let's start with the original source: “Speaking about the cars of the future, it should first be said that they will have to work in completely different conditions. The bulk of the machines will be able to move along wide convenient highways intersecting at different levels. The speed of movement will increase sharply. Therefore, high demands will be made on reducing the weight of cars and improving their streamlining. This will increase efficiency and reduce energy and fuel consumption.”
With mouth Yuri Aronovich drink something sweet! He recalled the sharply increased speed on “convenient highways” today, making his way to work. But in some respects the well-known designer and publicist was right …
WAGONS AND SMALL TROLLEYS
Cars really have become more economical. In traffic jams, sometimes, however, you forget about it. But if you put the 50-year-old car in the same conditions, it will even begin to consume fuel with the gluttony of a fabulous dragon. The long-distance bus was considered the ideal of the car Dolmatovsky. Everything is logical: a maximum of seats and loading places is located on the body area. Already at that time, passenger liners had hydraulic and pneumatic power steering and brakes. The advantage of buses Dolmatovsky also recognized partially glass roofs. Today, these are available to owners and cars.
Back to the bus. For one passenger, the author wrote, there are 100-150 kg of weight, and in a passenger car - 200-350 kg. Today, for a five-seater Ford Focus rider, there are about 240 kg of curb weight, in a sedan of a class above - under three hundred. Considering how much more stuffed into the current cars of all sorts of things, not even dreamed of by drivers and passengers of the 1950s, progress is evident! In particular, thanks to modern materials. For example, plastics. Yuri Aronovich suggested making them even a body. Well, partly his prediction came true.
But what is the car of the future in general when viewed from 1956? He, the futurologist thought, should have a motor at the back. Today, such a layout remained only on some sports models, but in those years the idea did not at all look like a whim. According to the concept of that time, a passenger car seemed like a smaller bus, approaching a body shape to a drop that was perfect in terms of aerodynamics. For this, the passenger part should be shifted as far forward as possible, and the rear part with the engine, on the contrary, should be narrowed. Such ideas were put forward even before the war, but even after a quarter of a century they did not lose relevance.
The carriage arrangement, wrote Dolmatovsky, will allow you to move chairs and fit all sorts of additional equipment. For example, a TV! This statement probably caused a smile among many readers who did not even have home televisions. And so they imagined a telemechanic who climbed into a minivan and, having removed a huge wooden case from the device, delves into its giblets with a soldering iron and a set of spare lamps. Is funny But after all, both the transformable interior and additional entertainment equipment are now the norm even in not very expensive models! But Yuri Aronovich, surprisingly, was more difficult to imagine, maximally shifted forward and placed across the power unit - a typical layout of a modern van - to Yuri Aronovich.
And the author saw small cars with two-wheeled and all-wheel drive motorcycles, but also with a hoodless, drop-shaped body.
The scheme of the car:
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1 - holes for air inlet and outlet
2 - power unit, consisting of a gas turbine and a current generator
3 - fuel tank
4 - battery
5 - rear wheels with electric motors
6 - trunk
7 - accelerator-brake pedal
8 - pipelines of hydraulic control
9 - steering wheel with hydraulic drive
10 - front wheels with disc brakes
11 - pipelines for regulating air pressure in tires and suspension
12 - pneumatic suspension of wheels
13 - front hinged door-cover
14 - a compartment for installing an artificial climate, a radio and a television
15 - television antenna
16 - stabilizers of aerodynamic stability
ALL GENIUS SIMPLY
Another trend of the 1950s is the maximum reduction in wheels. In those years, even large passenger cars costed "children" by our standards footwear: 13-, in extreme cases, 14-inch. To reduce the diameter of the wheel meant to reduce the arch-taking place in the passenger compartment. Big wheels are needed only for better cross-country ability, reasoned Dolmatovsky, because "cars sometimes still have to overcome bad roads." And it was not considered shameful that the rear wheels do more than the front ones. The need for their unification will soon disappear, because “much attention will be paid to organizing a dense network of service stations. This will make it possible to use comparatively complex and precise mechanisms in the construction, and dispense with such compulsory objects for modern cars as a spare wheel, tool, jack.”
This partly happened. Although already 100 km from Moscow to the jack and the spare wheel sometimes just fall in love. But back to cross. How to maintain ground clearance with small wheels? Of course, Dolmatovsky did not forget about him! He saw the future in adjustable hydraulic and air suspensions, which were then quite real - recall the Citroen.
But on mass models, the chassis will be simplified - the roads will become better. Yuri Aronovich really counted on replacing springs and springs with rubber bushings. Soon, the Mini did so in English. But things did not go further. However, the prediction of simplifications fits well with today's realities. On mass models now often began to abandon the multi-link back in favor of simple elastic beams.
Dolmatovsky, of course, did not occur to him that precise handling would turn into a real cult. He did not deny the merits of sports cars, but mass models were much closer to him, like vehicles designed to transport people and goods rationally and without extra costs. Under the control of law-abiding chauffeurs.
The advanced hybrid car of our day is far from the 1956 gas turbine:
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The internal combustion engine 1 is still in front
behind it is a gearbox with three planetary gears and a pair of electric motors 2
near the high-voltage block 3
rear - metal hydride batteries 4
In total, all-wheel drive BMW-X6 engines develop about 485 hp
ON THE WAY TO THE REACTOR
It remains to consider what power unit was planned for the car of the future. Yuri Aronovich believed in a gas turbine. And not only him. Prototypes with a similar engine existed. In 1950, an experienced British Rover was built, and in the 1960s, Chrysler even produced a small series of cars with such a motor. It seemed that a little more - and a compact, powerful power plant that does not require a gearbox, will take root in ordinary cars. She had to rotate the pump or generator, which transmit the moment to the hydraulic or electric motors built into the wheels.
The second promising direction is the generation of electricity from outside. It is enough to equip the car - the so-called HF-mobile - with a current collector and a transformer, and it will receive current from networks laid under roads. Mankind will gain a source of cheap electricity by developing nuclear energy. Or maybe cars will start driving thanks to compact reactors. With due protection, of course, emphasized Yuri Aronovich.
Belief in the omnipotence of man has since diminished. But electricity, although leisurely, nevertheless penetrates into cars in the form of hybrid and purely electric power plants.
In thinking about the governing bodies, Dolmatovsky was even closer to reality. He predicted a gradual abandonment of mechanical bonds. The removal of rods and cables will simplify the regulation of the steering wheel and pedals. Ideally, the author thought, only one pedal should remain in the car. He let her go - the car accelerated, pressed - braked. Well, it hasn’t come to that yet. Important steps on the way to managing by wire have been taken, but it is still a long way to a victorious finish.
