News broke this week that Disneyland\u2019s Autopia attraction will retire some of its gasoline-powered engines next year, the things that power those noisy and smelly gas vehicles that have been around since the park first opened in 1955. Disney will begin testing electric prototypes, though it\u2019s still unclear whether the ride will go all-electric anytime soon.<\/p>\n
But the news raises a few questions about Disneyland\u2019s Tomorrowland. Specifically, what took so long? And does an electric car even qualify as \u201cfuturism\u201d in the year 2026? Or 2027. Or 2028\u2026<\/p>\n
When Disneyland first opened in 1955, Tomorrowland was meant to depict what life in the distant year 1986 would look like. Tomorrowland was the most rushed and least developed land in 1955 (others included Fantasyland, Main Street U.S.A., Frontierland, and Adventureland), but it did have a ride called Autopia, which allowed guests to drive on a highway of the future.<\/p>\n
Highways may not seem very futuristic to us in 2026, but it was a legitimate idea in 1955. The\u00a0Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 would create the largest public works projects in the country\u2019s history. The future of transportation was everyone hopping into their gas-powered vehicles to move much quicker along interstate highways.<\/p>\n But the Autopia ride has largely remained the same since it was first introduced, with a few incremental improvements here and there. In 1977, for example, a Disney engineer replaced the bearings of the cars\u2019 axles with a more durable bearing material, according to an annual report from NASA highlighting how space tech has improved private industry.<\/p>\n Another change from 1955 was the introduction of guide rails to prevent the cars from turning into a chaotic bumper car ride. In the 1991 paper \u201cThere\u2019s Always Tomorrowland: Disney and the Hypercinematic Experience,\u201d Scott Bukatman writes about the change:<\/span><\/p>\n In the early days of Disneyland, one Tomorrowland attraction was the Autopia, where youngsters could drive actual, though miniature, automobiles. Disney intended these young citizens-to-be to thus learn traffic safety at an early age and hence to be prepared to enter the L.A. freeway system. Unfortunately, the children took \u201cdemented delight\u201d in crashing the cars, and the ride had to be put on tracks. One can hardly blame the kids for resisting the park\u2019s immaculately conceived system of guidance, but the Disney ethos could not tolerate these signs of technological breakdown.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And it\u2019s not like electric vehicles are this newfangled thing in the 2020s. When Hong Kong Disneyland opened in 2006, that park\u2019s version of Autopia was fully electric before the attraction eventually closed in 2016. We have the technology. We\u2019ve had the technology for decades.<\/p>\n The original Autopia cars were 5\/8-scale vehicles weighing just 160 pounds each, with fiberglass bodies created by boat builder Bill Tritt of Glasspar, chassis developed by Johnny Hartman of Hartman Engineering, and assembly handled by Ted Mangels and Ed Martindale of Mameco\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/ZJn8P6MlcI<\/a><\/p>\n![\"1978:](\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1978-autopia-disneyland.jpg\")
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