The Future of Driverless Cars

I'm very optimistic about how autonomous cars

are gonna develop in the next five to ten years.

One of the best things about autonomous technology

is that it's so flexible.

It can really be applied in a number of different platforms.

I think we're already transitioning.

Assisted driving, lane assist,

to the Tesla vehicle driving itself.

These are small steps that we need to take

in order to get to the autonomous vehicle.

We were exploring, how do you enable

a sense of trust with an autonomous vehicle?

They wanted to do something that deals

with the experience of being in a vehicle, autonomously,

versus shaping the car.

That was a really great framework

because it exposed things that aren't

just about driving enthusiasts,

but also about people and their relationships to technology.

We created a platform

that uses an augmented reality display.

The entire top of the car is a big glass dome that allows us

to augment the environment with extra information,

or even create games out of the environment.

Another application might be a little more social one.

You drive down the street and you see businesses and people,

augmented with information like reviews from Yelp

or Facebook statuses from your friends.

If it's understood that the car is driving itself,

how do you now give the driver the feeling

of being able to control the speed,

even though they're not gonna control the speed?

We figured the vehicle's fifteen feet long,

and like seven feet wide,

so that's a space that you can move the driver within

to create these sensations of moving faster

or moving slower, hugging turns, not hugging turns.

So, we gave the driver the control of that

rather than the control of the vehicle.

So, before getting into the vehicle,

you would choose the kind of instrument panel you want.

When you fire it up,

depending on what kind of vehicle you have set in there,

if it's a Porsche, it's gonna fire up like a Porsche.

Which is very different than from, I don't know, a Fiat.

So, the whole idea of this car

is that it's about ride sharing.

So, you don't have ownership of your vehicle,

but our brand leverages the power of the cloud.

So, you can make any vehicle your own,

no matter where you are.

So, say when you're home,

your thing is to wake up every morning,

you get your Starbucks, and then you go to work.

It knows your order, and, if you're in a place

that, say, doesn't have Starbucks,

it will give you something that's comparable to that.

So, even though you're halfway across the world,

this car feels like yours.

It knows you, it feels like you have the same driver

that you had back home.

We got majors that normally don't touch

upon technology, like fine art illustration,

to consider that they are also

a very very powerful force in a creative field.

With autonomous technology, essentially,

it becomes almost like this room on wheels,

where the activities within that space

are no longer confined to just driving.

Looking at older adults with neuro-degenerative disorders,

I would be so relieved if you could

get in a car and go somewhere,

and I wouldn't have to worry about him being in a car.

That's the most exciting thing about autonomous vehicles,

is it's a big cultural shift.

The drive becomes something very very different.