DECEMBER 2021 • 83READER’S DIGESTMercedes engineer said so long ago,
quite a lot like the cars of today.
“It’s a huge challenge”, Twohig
tells me. “We can do amazing
things with electric in terms of
straight-line acceleration, and
even cheat physics a bit with clever
software, but the effect of mass
on lateral acceleration—when
you’re cornering—is unsolvable
until batteries become a lot lighter.
Which they will, but it won’t happen
tomorrow. I’m very interested in
the work being done on "clean"
combustion engines—such as
Porsche’s work on synthetic fuels,
which is fascinating, so I can easily
imagine a trend towards lightweight
cars, with perfectly-clean internal
combustion engines, developed
for the enthusiast market, nicely
complementing the electric cars
that we will all be driving Monday-
to-Friday. I’m a huge optimist
about all this. We can address the
environmental issues that we’ve
created, and have a heck of a lot
of fun doing it.”
Whatever the future of motoring
holds, there's no doubt that it's
an exciting time to witness such
a crucial stretch of its development
and perhaps become a part of it on
a mass scale very soon. Q