Frame 01-02

THESE ARE RED-LETTER DAYS for the R&D

teams at major car brands. As the technolog-

ical horizon of autonomous driving draws

tantalizingly close, automakers are quickly

repositioning themselves as mobility pro-

viders. CIOs are rounding up anyone whose

job title includes the term ‘innovation’ in

an effort to nail down a concept that can

help their marque lay claim to the future

of the industry.

The current period might best be

described as the ‘golden hour’ – that

moment just after dawn when the sun peaks

over the horizon, the light takes on an

otherworldly brilliance and the improbable

seems somehow possible. To all intents and

purposes, autonomous driving is feasible

today. Lending a layer of credibility to any

proposed mobility scheme are Google’s AV

spinoff, Waymo, which has already clocked

five million road miles across 25 cities,

and self-driving cars from Uber and Lyft

available to customers in Pittsburgh and

Boston, respectively. At the same time, the

infrastructural and legislative challenges

involved indicate that mass adoption is

at least a decade away, not to mention the

difficulty of convincing the public that such

systems are safe. In such a gap, fantasy and

reality can coexist.

If autonomous

vehicles are set to

redefine where we

work, can their

design be left to

automakers alone?

The Mobile

Office

Words

PETER MAXWELL

Audi’s 25th^ Hour Project tested

riders' ability to perform tasks under

different environmental conditions.

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136 WORK