Personal vehicles are one of the primary means of transportation in most New Era civilizations, alongside public transportation. Personal cars in the New Era use a variety of fuel sources.
The cheapest vehicles burn hydrogen gas in an internal combustion engine. Conventional hydrogen engines use either a turbine or Wankel rotary form factor, a concept which had been proven by Old Era automaker Mazda. The hydrogen gas is stored in a reinforced high-pressure tank beneath the vehicle and refilled by pressurized hydrogen pumps at fuel stations.
Advantages of this type of vehicle are lower manufacturing costs, speed of refueling, longer range, and greater power-to-weight ratio. Large vehicles, such as box trucks and tractor-trailers, are most commonly built with this technology. It was common on small personal vehicles through the 2nd and 3rd centuries, but in the 4th century has gradually been replaced with more efficient systems.
This more advanced technology was experimented with during the Old Era, but never saw widespread adoption. Instead of burning the gas to produce energy through combustion, a fuel cell uses a chemical reaction to produce an electric current which drives the vehicle through one or more electric motors. The motors typically run directly on the DC current produced by the fuel cell, which can adjust the rate of the hydrogen reaction depending on throttle input. These vehicles are not equipped with batteries, instead producing electric power on-demand. Fuel storage and refueling is identical to hydrogen-engine vehicles.
The first New Era fuel cell vehicles began production in NE 286. The technology is more fuel efficient for small vehicles, but falls short of the hydrogen engine at large scale. It is also more expensive to produce. The lack of a battery reduces the overall weight, allowing it to offer respectable range for small and midsize vehicles.
Hybrid vehicles appear in a variety of forms. They may use a combination of electric propulsion and a small hydrogen combustion engine for longer trips. Other hybrid vehicles rely purely on electricity for propulsion while a secondary engine or fuel cell recharges the battery from a hydrogen fuel source as needed. Fueling may be accomplished with a combination of direct battery charging and hydrogen refueling, or purely through hydrogen.
Although a number of automakers produced hybrid vehicles in the New Era, the technology is less common. It experienced peak popularity for only a brief period from NE 270 to 290 when fuel cell vehicles entered mass production. Only a handful of fuel cell hybrid designs were produced, mainly by surviving Japanese automaker Honda.
Purely-electric vehicles had first appeared during the late Old Era, but required significant resources to manufacture in the New Era in the form of lithium mining and processing, and so remained a very small percentage of total vehicle production worldwide until the early 4th century.
These vehicles rely entirely on electricity stored in a large battery pack for propulsion. The DC current produced by the battery is commonly converted into three-phase AC to power the motors, which improves acceleration performance. Electric vehicles can be recharged at home from the electric grid or from home solar systems. Fuel stations also offer high-speed rapid charging connectors for electric vehicles to quickly recharge during long trips.
While electric vehicles are the most efficient per unit of energy, they are among the heaviest vehicles due to their large battery packs. They also have a shorter range than hydrogen vehicles with longer refueling times. However, the power from large electric motors makes them popular for auto racing and sports cars.
A small number of cars that burn gasoline and diesel fuels were manufactured during the first decades of the New Era, along with what few vehicles from prior to the Great War remained functional and had seen use during the Apocalyptic Age. In NE 86, the New Era Commission passed legislation outlawing the manufacture and sale of new fossil fuel-powered vehicles starting in the year NE 100. As of NE 366, fossil fuel vehicles exist purely for historical preservation, though they are still road-legal in many countries.
The graph below illustrates the change in distribution of actively-driven vehicles by fuel type throughout the New Era in increments of 50 years.
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