The Future of Cars Summit

Four years ago Autocar magazine peered 25 years into the future and asked if by then the combustion engine would be dead. We wouldn’t bother asking now. By 2040 petrol and diesel will have been dead for years. Every new car will be battery electric, hybrid or powered by hydrogen. Ownership will have given way to membership. Drivers will drive only if they really want to. These are familiar forecasts because they’re already coming true and they’re bringing with them a $7 trillion industrial transformation in the roof box.

There’ll be winners and losers; thrills and spills, and maybe even cures for smog and gridlock. Cars, right now, are a huge story. After a century of petrol-powered adolescence, they’re growing up, and cleaning up. So this spring Tortoise will turn its unblinking eye on them as they hurtle round a hairpin bend in transport history. We’ll be there to reverse-engineer the revolution in the year’s most unmissable automotive summit. Join us – to watch, listen and help figure it all out.

Got an access code?

Head here and enter it to claim your free ticket.

How it works

Your ticket will give you access to all of the sessions, but just like an in-person conference you can dip in and out. Recordings will be available in our members’ app the next day.

9.00-9.50am GMT

EVs need clean energy to provide clean mobility. How do we make that happen?

with Polestar

Countries are seeing huge and positive investments in charging infrastructure. But how clean is the power it uses? New research shows only a very low percentage of charging stations are running on renewable energy and the type of charging drastically impacts the lifetime carbon footprint of an EV. Transparency is key: car makers need to open up about the carbon footprint of production, but charging providers also have to be transparent about the power they put on the grid. Only a quarter of consumers trust car companies to be honest and do the right thing for the environment. Isn’t it time for that to change? What else does the transport sector need to do to become part of the solution?

10.00-10.50am GMT

How do we charge 10 million cars?

with bp

Now that the UK has committed to banning the sale of internal combustion engines, the National Grid reckons there could be more than 10 million EVs on Britain’s roads by 2030. How will they be charged? Fast, or slow? Is the UK already taking the slow lane when it should be going all-in on rapid charging? Who will set the standards for a new national charging infrastructure? Who will build it, how will we pay for it and where should we locate the charging points?

11.00-11.50am GMT

Driverless: no hands, all hype?

After years of hype about driverless cars the experts say we’re in the trough of disillusionment. What they omit to say is that we’ll get there in the end. When we do, how will we learn to trust cars that don’t need us? Where will they park? How fast will they go? Who will insure them? Will they end traffic jams? And what will we all do behind their tinted windows?

12.00-12.50pm GMT

The best car ever

What’s the acme of automotive engineering? The most beautiful thing on wheels? The car that mobilised a continent? The rolling answer to Red Rum? Four guests. Four deeply personal sets of goalposts. Four nominations for the ultimate accolade of the Tortoise car summit. Join us to offer your reactions – and cast your vote. 

1.00-1.50pm GMT

Are we at the end of our love affair with cars?

From getting your “L” plates and your first ever car to the post-wedding send off and inevitable upgrade to a people carrier, for decades our lives have been punctuated with car ‘moments’. But could that all be coming to an end? Even if you don’t go in for personalised registration plates or political bumper stickers, the cars we own have been part of our identities – a potent symbol of personal freedom, or a status symbol of a whole other kind. But ten years from now car ownership will be a minority hobby. Most of us will opt for a monthly subscription, like we do for Netflix, allowing us order to a low-emission city car for popping to the shops, or a long-range performance saloon for road tripping in comfort, at the touch of a button. We may even have learned to love autonomous driving. When personal transport is just a utility, like wifi or water, what will happen to our emotional bond with cars?