Volkswagen Has Created A Car That Will Drive For You As You Sleep With Seats That Can Be Turned Into A Bed Or A Conference Room
Volkswagen has announced they have created a self-driving car called the GEN.TRAVEL that can go on long distances and travel in bad weather. They only built it to showcase potential features for future cars down the road so this won't ever be available for purchase.
SOURCE - The fully self-driving vehicle’s work setup includes a conference layout with four seats and a large center table where passengers can work and eat.
Illuminating GEN.TRAVEL’S work environment is dynamic lighting that helps passengers avoid motion sickness.
GEN.TRAVEL riders looking to catch some rest can convert the four chairs into two flat-lying beds.
The dynamic lighting within this Volkswagen also induces passenger melatonin release to promote better rest.
A few things:
-The chairs are going to get so gross if they are used as a bed regularly. People are going to be fucking in their cars all the time if this becomes a thing. First, it'll be a novelty to say you did it and then people will do it out of convenience. High school kids will do it to avoid their parents and parents will do it to avoid their kids. Think about how gross your mattress would be if you didn't have sheets.
My first car was a 1986 Plymouth Sundance and once I farted really bad in the car and I could faintly smell it each time I sat down in the car after that until I drove it into a tree six months later. Chairs in cars are always a little gross. We don't need to make them worse.
-A conference center layout? Meetings in conference centers are the worst part of work. There is a peace with just driving somewhere. You roll down the windows and listen to music. It can be very relaxing if there is no traffic. Now they want us to lose that and replace it with a conference table and three people you work with to go over performance plans and minor HR violations?
-Some parts of automated driving sound great. It will make the roads much more safer. Driving is one of the most dangerous things we do on a daily basis. A couple generations people will be aghast that we drove everywhere going 60 MPH with only a yellow line and 8 feet separating us and another car going equally as fast in the opposite direction.
It will cut down on traffic too. There won't be any more rubbernecking creating congestion because a police officer pulled someone over. In my mind, I picture the roads as this seamless assembly line constantly in motion. It'll probably be all fucked up because of some reason we haven't though of yet but the ideal sounds nice.
- I will miss driving though. I doubt I'll ever be 100% comfortable sitting in a car in the drivers seat while a robot drives my car and I just sit there. It'll seem so weird. The other element of all of this is that so many people will lose their jobs if vehicles become automated. There are roughly 3.5 million truck drivers in this country alone. You know that the large companies will be the quickest to make the switch to robot drivers the second they can. Imagine being some 53 year old truck driver who has done that his entire life and loses not only his job but his entire livelihood?
I think I'm against automated cars at least for awhile. Let me roll down the window, blare some Billy Joel and drive down the open highway. Fuck the robots.