Overview
Right now, automobile design faces two significantly big restrictions: one, the need for a driver; second, it's got to be safe. Pretty straight forward. However, if tech projections are on the money, we're heading into a future in which neither will be a factor. Driverless vehicles, currently limited to Google experimentation and public transportation, will become ubiquitous. On fully-automated thoroughfares, collisions will be a thing of the past, and design will respond by moving further and further away from functionality and closer and closer to art.
London designer Dominic Wilcox is pre-riding the wave. At this year’s London Design Festival, finishing up tomorrow, he's revealed a life-size concept car. Or, more accurately, a mobile sleeping pod. "In the future it will be safer to drive in a driverless car than it will in a manual car," he says. "Therefore we don't need the protection systems that are built into contemporary cars. We can just have a shell of any design."
One thing's for certain, you’ll be certain to see it coming. The Stained-Glass Driverless Sleeper Car is a bed on wheels, protected by an egg-shaped dome made of multi-coloured glass panels. They're soldered together and attached to an arched wooden frame. The controls are remote; Wilcox imagines that, like that of Google, his creation will be operated via a distant computer.
That, of course, leaves loads of room for sleeping, reading, relaxing and sundry work and leisure activities. To illustrate the potential, Wilcox has simultaneously launched a concept website named taxirobot.co.uk. This allows visitors to select from a variety of driverless vehicles that double as mobile facilities, including a bedroom, an office, a gym, a dining room and even a sun bed that could be programmed to avoid cloudy routes.
Via Dezeen.