YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Nissan: for decades, the same names ruled. It was a complacent industry, and progress was incremental. Every five years or so, a new model of car would be brought out that was slightly better, slightly more efficient than the last. The domination of the internal combustion engine meant that this piece of late 19th-century technology set a huge entry barrier to new entrants. You couldn't set up a car company from scratch and hope to steal a march on the established players.

So they scoffed at suggestions that their world might be upended by electronic cars, ride-sharing apps like Uber -- which could mean fewer people owning cars -- or various degrees of driverless technology.

But life has come at them hard. Tesla has proved that there is a large market (and long waiting lists) for premium models -- and, so far, the company has defied the short-sellers who have bet on its demise. As for self-driving technology, it is Google which has led the way, investing more than a billion dollars. A fatal accident last year hasn't deterred Uber either. Eager to catch up, Toyota recently invested $500 million in Uber to help develop self-driving technology.

Another upstart in the automotive sector is Dyson, which since 2015 has been investing £2.5 billion to develop, in Wiltshire, an electric car with some element of driverless control. Driverless technology is crucial for the future shape of the automotive sector because it promises to slash the cost of taking a taxi -- which could undermine car owner-ship altogether, at least in cities.

Alternatively, it may turn out that hydrogen fuel cells prove to be the low-emission, carbon-neutral long-term replacement for petrol and diesel. Toyota is certainly looking that way -- it recently launched a hydrogen car, the Mirai. Hyundai, too, is investing heavily in hydrogen, last December announcing a £5.5 billion investment in the technology The battle between the two -- hydrogen vs electric -- has been dubbed by analysts at KPMG the car industry's 'Betamax vs VHS' moment, echoing the big battle over video technology in the 1980s. Electric cars ought to be more efficient, as hydrogen first has to be extracted from water -- there being no natural earthly source for pure hydrogen. But then, unlike battery cars, hydrogen cells can be refuelled in minutes. That is one reason why, according to a survey by KPMG, motor executives believe battery cars will eventually lose the battle. But nobody knows, which is what makes the future so uncertain for the car industry. And we all know how the video battle played out -- a victory for VHS before it, in turn, was blown away by DVD.

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