Forget electric cars, hydrogen cars and cars that run on compressed air. While some of the alternative-propulsion systems the carmakers are currently investigating will eventually be made affordable, it won’t happen soon enough for the EU lawmakers and cash-strapped consumers who are demanding more frugal, less polluting cars right now. So instead, expect to see cars getting radically simpler and lighter.

This will be a major about-face for the carmakers. For years, they have competed by cramming their cars with yet more gadgets they thought we wanted. While electric heated massage seats are nice, they come at a considerable cost; not just to the price, but to weight and complexity too. Heavy cars need bigger, more powerful engines and more fuel to perform well, and complex cars cost more to repair and die sooner. It’s an ugly upward spiral, but it might be coming to an end.

“Unless you really reduce weight, you will never be able to reduce emissions,” says Toyota’s head of research and development Masatami Takimoto. He has ordered his engineers to cut an incredible 30% from the weight of the next generation of Toyotas. They’ll do it by shrinking components, using more lightweight but expensive materials such as aluminium, magnesium and carbon fibre, and by shaving every unnecessary scrap of metal from your car’s frame.

And they’ll do everything they can to ensure you don’t notice the difference. Audi’s A1 sportback concept car uses its own wireless network to connect to your iPhone, reasoning that if your phone can make calls, play music and navigate there’s no need to replicate these functions in the car.

But some of the less useful gadgets may have to go. Former Aston Martin designer Henrik Fisker has established his own, eponymous car company in California whose backers include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that backed Google and Amazon and is now advised by Al Gore. His first car will be the Karma, an incredibly elegant luxury saloon powered by a plug-in hybrid drivetrain that can run on battery power alone for 50 miles before the petrol engine cuts in. But to do this, it needs to be light, and Fisker is open about offering a car without many of the gimmicks that come as standard on the luxury Mercedes and BMW saloons with which it will compete.

“We just won’t have as many of the so-called luxury features that everyone else tries to compete with,” he says. “There’ll be no radar cruise control or self-parking or active steering. We only define luxury as gadgets because there hasn’t been anything else to separate cars. I’d say luxury is being able to drive into a city centre without being called a pig for driving a polluting car.”

This doesn’t appear to have deterred buyers: Fisker says he was “deluged” with American Express Black cards when he first revealed the car; it officially goes on sale in 2010. The Karma’s lucky early customers will then discover the most important advantage of cutting the toy count; lighter cars are just way better to drive. Cheaper, greener and more fun: ask yourself again how much you want those electric heated massage seats.