For as long as I can remember, Autopia is my family’s first stop at the Happiest Place on Earth, aka Anaheim’s Disneyland. Admittedly, that’s incongruous considering we have driven forty or fifty miles on the treacherous Interstate 5 and encountered traffic snarls throughout. But even if you loathe the car trip to Disneyland, you don’t outgrow Autopia. It’s an utopia where there are no accidents, forever free parking, and a worker in spotless overalls escorts you in and out of the vehicle.
Since the park opened in 1955, there have been few changes to the Autopia ride, except for sponsorship. The little cars continue to have real gas engines and noisy motors, so it continues to have the look and feel of a racetrack. According to The Los Angeles Times, the original sponsors were oil companies, first Richfield, then Arco, and finally Chevron. The corporate branding switched to Honda Motors in 2016 but that contract expires soon.
Electric Vehicles, someday…
Ideas about mobility, culture, and racetracks are changing. Disney announced that it will be ending gas powered cars and switching over to electric propulsion. For reasons that are not clear, they did not give a date and said that it might still take a few years. But it’s a move in step with the times. Formula–E cars are now an established sport in Season Ten with 22 drivers and 11 teams. Other theme parks have already innovated here, notably Hong Kong Disneyland.
Going electric will not be a surprise to the target audience. Kids are accustomed to motoring in mini-electric vehicles in their backyard or playground, and even at Legoland. About 25% of their parents, if from California, are now favoring buying electric vehicles. The kids, five and younger today, will be getting their driver’s license after 2035. That will coincide with the mandate in California and twelve other states that all new vehicles coming to market be 100 percent electric.
More than Symbolism:
For the future drivers of 2035 a gasoline powered car may seem as quaint and peculiar as the phone that hangs on the wall with a long cord and a circular dial. But for Autopia this transition is more than symbolic.
Exposure to tailpipe fumes is a particular health hazard for young people. Their lungs are not as developed and they are more susceptible to particulates in gasoline that are associated with asthma and respiratory diseases. There are also carcinogens in the fuel. Few parents have stopped their child from taking the ride because of health hazards but we shouldhave compassion for the employees that staff it. Often they are local teens. Working alongside these vehicles, over six or eight hour shifts, cannot be healthy. This problem would have been even more toxic for employees (and riders) during the early years of the ride when gasoline was formulated with lead. Lead was banned in 1975.
Quietly We Go:
Today, Autopia is noisy and so are the kids. The ride is not so deafening that earplugs are required, but it is hardly cacophonous either- – except to a race car enthusiast. It’s likely that Disney will carry over the tradition from the old ride to the new one, piping in sounds. Today automakers like Porsche, Lamborghini and others incorporate a bevy of throaty revs on recording chips.
But the keystone is the battery. An older generation that grew up driving cars is more familiar with mechanical operations. Juvenile drivers, still too young for a driver’s license know better. Their modern world runs on batteries. Batteries are the critical element that power up their ipads, games, hand-held devices, and, of course, smartphones and watches. There is some chance that their first task when they enter the park is to scout for the wireless chargers.
Tomorrowland Choices:
Disney will be making some interesting battery choices as it redesigns Autopia. They could electrify the rail in the middle, so that the energy flows to batteries, similar to an old-fashioned trolley line. Or, they can redesign the track entirely so that electric current is embedded in the cement roadbed and the vehicles recharge as they pass over it. Adding solar panels to the car may assist, as this is sunny Anaheim. An interesting option is to use either lithium type batteries with a maintenance area for fresh battery swaps. While not popular here, and once abandoned by Tesla, battery swapping continues to have a second-life.
Most visitors will not be looking under the hood, so to speak, to see which battery technology gets deployed for their short ride. But for those who do get curious, there should be dashboards. A contemporary vehicle, just like the ones that ply the 5 Freeway, should report key elements like the distance driven, the kWh of energy used and finally, for Autopia as a whole, today’s environmental contribution and carbon reduction. This, after all, is the happiest place on earth before you return to the 5 freeway.