Climate control is a big issue in the political field and manufacturer swill also move in that direction, and while the club does not want to talk about politics, what the manufacturers do is a topic.
A massive amount of work has been done on diesel engines and is still being done. Joe, you are quite right about petrol engines -- they can be made smaller and still more powerful. Jaguar did that with the Ingenium engines -- and they will continue along that route.
The electric engine is a long way from perfection and there is still the question about emissions from power stations need to charge batteries for motor vehicles,
There is probably more use of power from mobile 'phones and more battery charging from them than there is currently from cars,
Peter.