Climate change may be the biggest threat to our way of life and demands urgent action to cut emissions. At the same time, the world’s population is expected to rise to around 9 billion by mid-century while the number of vehicles could double as millions come out of poverty.

More people than ever will want to own cars and motorbikes or use public transport, as the world’s population grows and prospers and urbanisation accelerates. What major challenges must be overcome?

The big challenge for our future mobility is to reduce emissions from all types of transport. We have to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which cause global warming, but we also to need to reduce emissions of other air pollutants to improve the quality of the air we breathe, especially in cities.

Unfortunately, there’s no single golden solution.

Is it the end of the road for the combustion engine?

There’s still huge potential for improving combustion engine efficiency, with the help of better fuels and lubricants. Proven technologies that are already available could improve fuel efficiency by about another 30%, even compared to today’s best engines. The problem is that they are relatively costly.

It’s good to see competition from different engine types like electric hybrids, purely electric cars or even hydrogen fuel cells. It stimulates combustion engine engineers to make improvements.