A GLOOMY FORECAST FOR ALL THINGS AUTO IN THE COMING YEAR

Not all will be well in the automakers’ world if a few of these come true

h, the start of a new year.

Your hangover is ancient history, the world economy hasn’t yet had time to crash and the size of your Boxing Day-sale 65-inch OLED TV is still a novelty. Optimism still permeates the air.

Allow me, then, to shatter all this pent-up good cheer with some not quite apocalyptic, but still seriously concerning predictions for 2016, automotive style.

A Tesla driven by its vaunted Autopilot system will get in an

accident: And not just the fender benders that plague Google’s little self-driving runabouts, but a frame cruncher that could cause injury.

The problem isn’t Tesla’s software. Indeed, by all accounts, the Autopilot system that is part of Version 7.0 of Tesla’s software update is more than competent; YouTube is full of videos showing Model S cars merrily driving themselves. Nope, the problem, states MIT’s Technology Review, is that while “Tesla says its new Autopilot feature is not synonymous with autonomous driving, some drivers are acting like it is.”

Along with all those laudatory YouTubers showing on-track Teslas are a disturbing number showing the Model S suddenly veering into oncoming traffic, so far without deleterious consequences. The owners in those videos — many who like testing technology to its limits — are pushing Autopilot beyond Tesla’s clearly stated limitations.

“Drivers need to maintain control and responsibility of their vehicle while enjoying the convenience of Autopilot in the Model S,” said Khobi Brooklyn, Tesla’s director of global communications.

Not everyone’s getting the message.

The average fuel economy of cars in North America will decrease even further: No, not the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) of the cars that automakers produce. That continues to grow almost exponentially as automakers work to meet global fuel economy regulations; there are now 26 cars sold in the United States that get better than 40 miles per U.S. gallon. I’m talking about the average fuel economy of the vehicles we consumers actually buy. Thanks to the ever-decreasing cost of crude — and a (slightly smaller) decrease in pump prices — North Americans are buying larger and more powerful cars. Pickup sales are booming, ditto SUVs, and even once-thought-extinct dinosaurs like Cadillac’s Escalade are making a comeback. According to Michael Sivak of the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, who monitors vehicle fuel consumption, “the average fuel economy of new vehicles sold in the U.S. in November was 25 mpg — down 0.1 from the revised value for October — and down 0.8 mpg from the peak reached in August 2014.”

With analysts speculating that crude could drop as low as US$20 a barrel — could we see the return of 75 cents-a-litre gas? — it’s unlikely this profligacy will abate any time soon.

Volkswagen will get broken up: At the very least, the vast empire that is Volkswagen AG will get whittled down. If the diesel emissions scandal extends to every diesel in Porsche’s and Audi’s portfolios, look for some serious scapegoating. If it does happen, Porsche, an independent entity until just a few years ago, would almost assuredly be the first to go.

Even if it doesn’t, VW AG faces some extraordinary costs, what with the re-jigging of more than 11 million cars, various punitive penalties and, of course, myriad lawsuits that are sure to punish its treachery. The US$10-billion the company is said to have set aside will not be nearly enough, so look to the board of directors to start selling off some of the less essential parts of the empire such as Ducati — yes, Volkswagen owns the somewhat tempestuous, and not often profitable Italian motorcycle manufacturer — and the MAN truck division.

I suspect Bentley is untouchable, but, if I were an upper manager at Lamborghini — yes, VW owns a tempestuous, and not often profitable Italian supercar manufacturer, too — I’d be looking for a way to transfer myself back to Germany. This is going to get a lot more ugly before it gets better.

More cities will try to ban cars: This one is a no-brainer, as some European big-city mayors — most loudly Paris’s Anne Hidalgo — have already vowed to ban diesels, and in some cases all cars, from their downtown cores to combat runaway air pollution.

Indeed, the list of cities jumping on the anti-automobile bandwagon is growing. Hamburg is banning cars on certain roads, Madrid wants to expel cars by 2020 and Milan recently had to ban temporarily all cars from its core to battle choking smog. Dublin, Brussels and London are said to be contemplating their own diesel bans and, as Driving.ca has already noted, Oslo wants to ban all cars — even EVs — by 2019.

According to the World Health Organization, some seven million premature deaths each year are linked to air pollution, a large part of which, protagonists say, comes from automotive tailpipes. It may take a little longer for this tsunami of anticar sentiment to hit North America. But have no doubt, it’s coming.

Apple will take over our dashboards: Fifteen years after BMW plagued us with iDrive, the auto industry has finally decided to do what it should have done all along and hand all this computer interface/infotainment business over to the experts, namely Apple and Google. Most General Motors products will offer either Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in 2016 and Ford, Volvo and myriad other marques are not far behind.

Imagine that, the cellphone interfaces we all use daily — heck, hourly — right there in our cars. You mean we won’t have to learn a whole new operating system every time we buy a new car? And all the data on our iPhones will be readily at hand? It took only 15 years for the auto industry to figure that this might be a good thing? Who says automakers are slow on the uptake?

Electric vehicles will roam farther afield: Another no-brainer. Porsche has already announced that its new Mission E will go 500 kilometres on a charge. Ditto Audi’s Q6 e-tron. None of this is rocket science: Like Tesla, they’ll just cram larger (and more expensive) batteries into big (and more expensive) luxury cars.

When this will all trickle down to the $25,000 to $35,000 range that might appeal to the masses is anyone’s guess. Tesla keeps promising, but all we ever seem to get is more play-toys for the independently foolish.