As an example, companies are moving to smaller displacement engines equipped with turbochargers and direct injection for efficiency but at the same time to maximise performance with its reduced displacement.
One of the cars utilising this innovation, is the new Ford Mustang with the "EcoBoost" 2.3 litre 4 cylinder engine, which though Ford hasn't released any official info about it, they do say this engines slots in above the base cars 3.7 litre V6. Which is to say this brand new turbocharged 2.3 litre engine provides more performance than the base 3.7 litre V6 engine.
Another sought after innovation is the use of LED's (Light emitting diode) in the headlights and tailights of a vehicle. The benefits of the usage of LED's are its low energy consumption, which will not burden the cars alternator also known as the dynamo in laymans terms. The downside though is the high cost of production of LED's and its unstable ability to cope with temperature change which will require car companies to engineer it to suit the surroundings, which makes it complicated to bulid and would cost more. For example, LED's for the front headlights of an Audi A8 are an optional extra, costing 1600 dollars in the US market.
When it comes to drivetrain innovations however, there are many to be named. One of them are the usage of gearboxes utilising 7 or 8 gears and soon 9 gears would be introduced as well. The purpose of the additional gears are to keep engine revs low at high speeds to maximise efficiency and reduce fuel consumption. However, the Japanese car industry is lagging behind in terms of transmission technology, companies like Honda,Toyota and Mitsubishi are only producing gearboxes up to 6 speeds for their road cars with only Nissan producing 7 speed gearboxes for their cars such as the Nissan 370Z.
For in-car infotainment, in media head units, some car companies have began to either remove in-car CD players or to offer them as an option as other forms of media are growing in popularity such as, bluetooth A2DP media streaming, iOS device recognition, USB drive capability and many others. For example, nowadays less people would go through the hassle of burning a new CD for music and would rather stream their music through bluetooth wirelessly with no issue whatsoever. One of the cars which do not offer a CD player is the Chevrolet Spark.
In conclusion, these are a few innovations being integrated within cars today by their manufacturers. Its called moving with the times, as time flies more will be exposed to technologically advanced innovations and these are one of the few ways a cars manufacturer will integrate them in to their products.
