Research and development in the automobile industry focuses on reducing gasoline consumption and emissions of pollutants. The goal is to develop and mass-produce automobiles by the turn of the millennium which - driven at moderate speeds - will only consume three liters of fuel over a distance of 100 kilometers.

In some areas, road and rail transport do not compete but instead complement each other. One example of this is the “piggyback” system by which trucks are transported over long distances on special railroad flatcars. In container traffic, too, in which the railways are an important link in the transport chain, road and rail work together. This also applies to car-carrying passenger trains.