Cars are this generation’s way of life – it’s a universal fact. Whether students use them to commute from their homes or just to visit family on the weekend, cars get us from one place to another faster than most of our great-great-grandparents could imagine.

So it is little wonder that with raising gas prices and mounting evidence of the car’s connection to global warming that the demand for new vehicles both efficient and environmentally friendly are higher than ever.

On Thursday, as part of UNIQUE’s Constitution Week, three screenings of the documentary, “Cars of the Future,” showed the ideas inventors, scientists and mechanics have come up with to make cars more gas-efficient – or in some cases, use another source of fuel besides gas.

“People think of driving as a ‘freedom.’ That freedom is being affected by the high gas prices; which is affecting everyone in some manner?. It would be beneficial for students to know about other options,” Zenia Diokno, Programs Adviser for UNIQUE Programs said.

The documentary begins with Tom and Ray Magliozzi, co-hosts of NPR’s “Car Talk,” looking for a “car of the future” to replace their old vehicle, and dragging the audience – or rather the camera-crew – along for the ride.

Setting aside this rather corny attempt at plot, the screening was loaded with information told in a down-to-earth manner most non-scientific students would be able to understand.

The experts interviewed in the documentary appeared to genuinely care about their subject and more than willing to share with the documentary’s car-loving hosts. Simple yet visually interesting computer graphics were used to demonstrate systems that were more complex, like how an engine worked or what’s inside of a hydrogen-fueled bus.

Yet the real fascination lay in the cars themselves, carted out one-by-one like floats in a parade, each with an unbiased list of pros and cons.

There were cars already on the market – such as the hybrid Prius, which uses electricity and gas – to those only seen by their creators – for example, the Hypercar, which is made with a lightweight material and aerodynamically designed to use gas more efficiently.

For all we know, these ideas might be bringing a new age in the history transportation.

“I hope that this documentary will help students see that we are potentially at a tipping point with regard to vehicle designs and propulsion technologies as we know it,” said assistant professor of Civil Engineering Kevan Shafizadeh said.

Afterward was a panel discussion where the audience asked questions about what they had just seen. Those present included Shafizadeh, Bill Boyce, leader of SMUD’s Electric Transportation Group, Bill Brooks, who worked for 25 years at R&D and installation of electronic data acquisition for the oil exploration industry, Josh Cunningham, program manager at UC Davis’ Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS), and Ryan LaPorte, an environmental compliance inspector for the County of Santa Cruz.

The discussion ranged from questions about the efficiency of today’s fuels, to how Sacramento is learning from other cities, to how fuel-saving means used in cars could be applied to homes.

Most of the time each of the panelists took turns answering questions based on their respective backgrounds. Needless to say, those who attended learned about a lot more than cars.

“It actually made me question my everyday driving, and right now I currently drive a really big car so it made me think about selling or downgrading because it made see how much it affects the environment,” undeclared major Paige Coffield said.

The reality is “not one solution with solve the fuel efficiency problem,” Josh Cunningham said.

But it’s little thoughts like those that do make a small difference.

“We are the consumer; we have control over our destiny,” Shafizadeh said.

Kyrie Eberhart can be reached at [email protected]