We’re on the cusp of a revolution in transportation: What will streets teeming with self-driving cars really mean? Once our hands are off the steering wheel and delivery trucks have no driver, what will change in our lives?
IDEO has decades of experience with automotive work, which has brought keen insight into the trends and technologies that will define the vehicles of the future. This presents an important design opportunity: If we visualize today the way we’ll live in decades to come, we’ll be better prepared to make smart decisions when the age of autonomous vehicles arrives.
The Future of Automobility is an online visualization of how life with driverless cars might really look and feel. We considered three scenarios: “Slow Becomes Fast,” which looks at how the experience of commuting will change when we can look away from the road; “21st Century Mule,” where we examine automated package-delivery fleets; and “Inverse Commute,” where we envision workspaces moving autonomously toward workers—mobile offices parked in underused areas of our cities.
The experience is as emotionally compelling as it is feasible, combining radical innovation in transportation concepts with immersive storytelling. It expresses not just our vision of the future, but also how we work, how we think, and what we value.
Explore this vision at automobility.ideo.com.
A rendering of a self-driving delivery truck, delivering everything from your new jeans to a hot lunch, almost instantly.
A far more productive commute is possible, as commuters are will be far more productive en route since they'll no longer be actively driving vehicles during significant portions of their journeys.
Inverse commutes — where working spaces come closer to where people live instead of commuters heading to pre-determined workplaces.
2015