Marie Claire Australia — June 2017

194 marieclaire.com.au

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GL

E’S^ CA

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Sit back and enjoy the ride, driving is about

to go hands-free and it changes everything

Swiss company

Rinspeed has

designed a

driverless

concept car

(above) that’s

a mobile

entertainment

vehicle.

F

lying cars may not be

a reality yet, but the

self-driving cars set

to hit the streets this

year are about to make our daily

commute more like plane travel.

For when you take the

redundant steering wheel and

pedals out of a car (as auto

makers are already planning to

do), the seats can be turned into

couches with massage functions

and accompanying screens.

Suddenly you’ve got a business

class experience on the road.

German giant BMW is

already perfecting this scenario

• its special Designworks
  department in California
  is helping sculpt Singapore
  Airlines’ new first class cabins.
  Designworks president Laurenz
  Schaffer says working with
  airlines made sense when he
  looked at the future of cars.
  “I think we’ll have fully
  automated cars on the road by
  2025, with the steering wheel
  gone, and it will be very much
  like a flying experience,” he says.
  “We’re already working on
  customer scenarios – what will
  people do in those two hours a
  day they used to spend driving?
  What will they consume? Who’ll

provide the content and how

will we be able to profit share

with people who provide it?”

While Google (with its

Waymo, below) and Uber have

a small number of self-driving

cars on the roads in the US,

the idea of selling them to the

public always seemed like it was

decades away. That changed late

last year when Audi announced

it would sell a proper “hands-off,

eyes-off ” car, the A8, in 2017.

This is a big jump from

systems like Tesla’s Autopilot,

which will drive for you, but

demands you keep your hands

on the wheel. What makes these

new systems possible are the

clever cameras we’re already

seeing in mass-market cars like

Mazda’s CX-5, which can read

traffic signs and warn you if

you’re going too fast.

Audi board member Dr

Dietmar Voggenreiter says the

A8 with Audi Intelligence will

FUTURE

DRIV EN

completely automate the driving

experience, freeing up drivers to

“read a newspaper, check their

emails or do their Snapchats”

while driving up to 65km/h.

“You’ll be able to take

your hands off and the car will

do the braking, the accelerating,

the changing lanes and you can

really read a book or whatever

you want to do,” he says.

Audi has also stated it will

take full legal responsibility for

any accidents or injuries caused

by its cars while in autonomous

mode, because a driver who’s

been allowed to sit and play with

their phone can’t be at fault.

If we all effectively become

passengers, car companies say

they see a future in which many

of its vehicles are “on call” (see

breakout), rather than owned.

Garages could become expensive

luxuries and disappear.

If you love driving, the future

looks more bleak than exciting,

but as Dr Voggenreiter points

out, the big selling point is 90

per cent of all car accidents are

caused by human error, so once

the software is good enough to

replace humans, the road toll

will drop – hopefully to zero.

The future is here.

COLLECT

CALL

Picture a world

in which you

don’t own a car but

rather call one via

a smartphone app,

which drops you at

the local shopping

megaplex and then

zips off to drive

other people

around. When

you’re ready to

leave, you simply

order another

one to meet you

at the door and

take you home.

HIGH TECH