The future of automobiles is getting closer every day.
German auto maker Mercedes Benz showed off a “car of the future” prototype self-driving car in California on Wednesday and futurist and Steve Jobs wannabe Elon Musk’s new Tesla Model S is getting an autopilot mode within the next few months.
It’s only a matter of time before we’re all sitting in a living-room style automobile, sipping slow-brewed coffee and reading the latest social news from our iPads as we zip along to our next appointment or meeting, right?
Because as Musk famously said: “Someday, driving a car will be illegal.”
The F015 — Mercedes-Benz’s moniker for it’s sleek, egg-like prototype — won’t even be available until 2030, but boy is it stunningly futuristic. Check out the interior, designed to be more like a living room than the inside of a car, and the flowing, rounded curves of the exterior body in the promo video below.
https://youtu.be/DYTV4d-Gn0s
It’s not just the self-driving aspects that Mercedes wants to focus on, even though that seems to be the hot button for many a consumer, but rather the space inside the automobile.
“The car has high-resolution screens in almost every interior panel, uses premium leather, wood and metal, and features eye-tracking and touch-control to minimize passenger effort,” Mercedes’ Holger Hutzenlaub told USA Today. “We’re creating a personal retreat.”
Add me to the list of folks who want to retreat to that interior.
Photo: CC Wikipedia
Electric car visionary Elon Musk’s Tesla Model S is a vehicle that’s available for purchase today, offering 300 miles on one charge and some pretty sweet flip-up doors. According to Engadget, the Model S is getting a new autopilot mode that’s more like cruise control for steering. It only works on highways instead of residential or city streets, but will come as a software update to current Tesla cars within the next three months.
Seriously, a software update will let Tesla Model S owners ride highways without touching the steering wheel. Where can I get one of these?
Ultimately, software will get better and cars like the Mercedes F015 will arrive. Hopefully, we won’t see a ton of accidents or injuries from these machines, or draconian legislation to prevent them from getting on our roads and into our driveways. The future is coming and this is one bit of it I’m pretty excited about. You?
Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he’ll really appreciate it.
8 responses to “Slide over, car companies are ready to take the wheel”
Watch out Elon, Sarah Conner is coming.
But seriously, I understand where Musk is coming from, and the time we can reclaim, safety and efficiency virtues, etc — but this switch from participant to occupant turns the personal automobile from an object of passion and desire into a mobile extension of your home. I guess that’s why the Mercedes is so … vanilla.
“Steve Jobs wannabe…” PUH LEASE. if that was true, Elon would be building Tesla’s in China, paying miniscule wages, and laughing all the way to the bank while his Chinese workforce committed suicide. Musk is way better than jobs. I haven’t heard him make any jerkish comments regarding Tesla and it’s drivers. Such as, “You’re holding it wrong”
Well, at the rate Tesla is going, they’ll be out of business soon, they’ve been running at a loss, every quarter. You sound like you have absolutely no idea about the difference between making mobile electronic devices in China vs making a car in the US, the labor rates is such a small reason as to why they do it. The bigger problem is getting enough people that have the dexterity to work with small electronic devices fast enough to ramp up production lines to meet demand. Tesla doesn’t have to hire hundreds of thousands of employees, Apple like other large smartphone mfg do. The other aspect is that a lot of electronic components have been already made in China and other areas on Asia for many decades. But to defend Apple, their processors are made in the US. Apple’s products still create a lot of US jobs. Apple probably has more US based employees than Tesla, Apple certainly knows how to run a profitable business, Tesla doesn’t. Look at their financials. How many iPhones get produced each year? A couple of hundred million units. How many Tesla’s do they build a year? Maybe 22,000? Ha. There is a big difference between making the low tens of thousands of units vs hundreds of millions of units of anything.
If I had the choice, I’d probably would take the Mercedes, they’ve been making cars for a LOT longer than Tesla, they already have a big distribution and service network.
You have no idea what compassion is and judging from you post you don’t care to learn..
By your logic, since Apple makes “low tens of thousands of units”, they shouldn’t care about a living wage or proper working conditions so workers don’t kill themselves? Apple could make a lot more of their products in the US without raising prices much. They choose not to, that is part of the legacy Steve Jobs left behind. I notice how you attack Tesla, but can’t defend Apples lack of compassion to pay proper wages.. Instead they offshore BILLIONS of dollars so they can not pay taxes. Another part of the Steve Jobs legacy. Greed. Again, Musk is nothing like Jobs in that regard. He has higher ambitions.
Tesla’s burning cash due to the Model X development, factory expansions and GigaFactory. If I had a dollar for every comment similar to yours talking how Tesla won’t make it, I’d be rich.
The issue with the iPhone 4 antenna was found that it didn’t affect all units, it only effected a small portion and they initially couldn’t figure out what the problem was because there are a lot of variables like it could have been their location proximity to a cellular network, the quality of the cellular network, so in the beginning the only thing they could think of was how they held it and turned out to be the case, so they instead just sent out free bumpers to those that it affected. And it wasn’t all of the units, which made it harder to diagnose what the problem was and how to fix it. It was a mfg issue with the metal case and the gap.
… So what… It was still an apple issue. By your logic, because it was only a small amount of product, SJ had every right to act like a total jerk? That’s like yelling at your dog when he want’s to go out because the door is stuck. Again, that comment highlights what an absolute jerk Steve Jobs was. he might have been brilliant in some regards, but that doesn’t change the fact that he didn’t have much compassion.
Based on Tesla’s Market Cap, the company is only worth a little less than $25 Bil. Apple makes more than that in Net Profits during the March and December quarters combined, so that kind of gives you some perspective. I have no idea how many cars Tesla has to make to break even, but I can tell you it’s a LOT more than 25 thousand. hahahahaha. Elon has a ways to go until he can prove that Tesla has a successful business model, so far they haven’t proved it. It would be nice to know what Tesla’s break even point is with regards to them selling cars before I would invest in that stock. I can see Tesla getting sold off within the next few years if they can’t make a profit.
Love the MB innovation of moving the blind spot from the rear quarters to the
front quarters.