General Motors has often said self-driving cars will require designers and engineers to rethink how the automobile as we know it is packaged. On Monday, GM supplier Magna unveiled its take on how to package a self-driving car.
The supplier showed off images of its reconfigurable cabin that allows passengers to take advantage of unused space. The cabin is supposed to represent a flexible space where passengers can move cargo, carry out work, relax, and even move freely while the car is in motion. As the images show, the cabin can face seats campfire style to “foster conversation,” unlike today’s cars which point all seats forward for safety and driving purposes.
The design came after Magna researched passenger preferences in the United States, Europe, and China. For long road trips, passengers preferred the campfire seating with a swivel function and four-way headrest support for those who want to doze off. The seats also include a massage function.
For car sharing, the seats can be configured to maximize space for personal belongings or packages, while a ride-sharing configuration can set the seats up like a conference table with three-wide seating. An app can also configure the interior for optimal space based on the needs of a particular trip. For example, a rider can program the cabin to maximize space on the left or right side for cargo, or take up more space for comfort.
Magna has a history in interior packaging, too. The supplier helped pioneer Chrysler’s Stow and Go seating for minivans in the early 2000s and was first to include its EZ Slide entry on a vehicle in North America with the GMC Acadia.
In the future, we’ll likely see more companies explore what they can do with the cabin as the car handles more of the driving functions. But, don’t expect self-driving cars to take over responsibilities overnight.
Comments
At yet at GM all we get is the same drab dated interiors on the trucks. No imagination or attention to detailed quality. Don’t expect this sort of thing anytime soon from the bean-counter boomers at GM.
I don’t want autonomy, I have not met anyone who does. Where is this crap coming from?
Mary wants you to want it and that’s all that matters.
anyone who pays someone/something to transport themselves or their belongings from point a to z, is a potential customer for autonomy.
i don’t think people care if that driver is a person or a computer as long as it is safe.
so you may not want autonomy but a person getting stuff delivered, taking a taxi, etc … will use it if it makes sense.
if i order something off the internet, i don’t care how it arrives on my doorstep and nobody else does either.
Cities who mandate it to relive congestion, and the people who don’t want to drive with other people who can barely drive properly as they travel from point A to point B.
Besides, if GM doesn’t do it, other automakers will, and everyone on GMA will complain about how slow GM is to respond to market conditions.
Autonomous cars WILL not relive congestion. I never understood where that crack-pot logic came from. It will be the same amount of cars or more…the only difference will be computers driving and the gov ‘s and corporations increased ability to track and monitor your movements. People will be just as frustrated and bored in traffic as well. Except now they can’t try and do something about it. So go back to sleep, or put your head back into your phone…
Like most things; city governments don’t know sh#t about anything the legislate. If society was serious about pollution or traffic they would move everyone en-mass to telecommuting.
Unless your job involves mechanical or direct manipulation of equipment, there is NO reason for you to be sitting in an office 15 miles from home. Log in on the internet and take full advantage of WWW!!
“Autonomous cars WILL not relive congestion. I never understood where that crack-pot logic came from.”
You’ll understand after this.
As for the “gov ‘s and corporations increased ability to track and monitor your movements”, where have you been for the last 15 years? This is already commonplace and irreversible.
How many future thinking geniuses and billions of Dollars did these drawings cost? It’s evident GM is at the forefront here!
Yes lets pour untold millions into this fantasyland technology that nobody asked for. Barra at her clueless best.
Barra cannot think for herself and she does not realize that the new car buyer that walks into a GM showroom could care less about her “Zero emission, zero crash, zero congestion” vision for 50 years down the road. GM is not going to grab a sale from, let’s say, Ram because of her vision. They will sell a Silverado because it has better powertrains and interiors than Rams. But as we have read in recent reviews of the Silverado, we can see where Machete Mary’s vision is manifesting itself- cheap interiors and impotent powertrains.
Those side seats would never pass a crash test.
Yes autonomous will crash too.
So far all attempts at autonomy are proving the value of a human behind the wheel.
Have you heard of algorithmic learning? Because a computer can learn from it’s mistakes in a lab, and it can also learn how to drive from real world experience….in the exact same way humans learn how to drive.
You and the computer are both taught formally, and then put out into the world, and over the next 40 years you accumulate an understanding of how to drive and what to do when unique circumstances arise.
If you can learn how to drive, a computer can learn it too.
But the real advantage is that computers can transmit and share their collective database of knowledge getting ever closer to perfection with multiple possible outcomes that are weighted against past examples, whereas humans die and take the knowledge with them.
There are already autonomous cars on the road right now that have a cumulative database of knowledge of how to drive to draw upon, having covered more miles than you have ever driven in your life, and they already have a better safety record than you’d ever be able to mathematically achieve.
Your thinking of a computer as being just for Word documents and email, and you’re at a risk of being left behind.
You want my advice? Invest in the leading autonomous software engineering firms, and no, Tesla is not one of them.
how is that seating different from a limo?