A living room on steering wheels

Swivelling seats? Movies projected across the windshield? Social media feeds on the windows? As driverless car technology develops, companies, design institutes and researchers are asking the question: What does the car of the future look like on the inside?

With companies like Google, Uber and others racing ahead to develop fully autonomous vehicles, the era of the driver hunched over the steering wheel may eventually give way to a living room on wheels. But with its long development lead times, designers are already thinking about how such technology will change the interiors of cars.

“When people are in an autonomous vehicle, their expectations will shift,” said Hakan Kostepen, executive director for strategy and innovation at Panasonic’s automotive systems unit, a major industry supplier. “They will want their personal space to become one of smart mobility, connecting them and relevant information to act upon.”

Those are all challenges being taken up by the automotive industry and the schools that supply them with the next generation of designers. At ArtCenter College of Design in Los Angeles — one of the world’s premier automotive design schools — 14 students recently worked on creating new concepts for a future vehicle interior whose occupants would no longer be shackled by the need to drive. Participants were picked from multiple disciplines, including product design, transportation and graphics. To fuel their discussions, specialists in the fields of sound composition, olfactory reaction and even animal behaviour were brought in. Visual strategists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory paid a visit as well.

The proposals, which were reviewed by executives from the carmaker BMW, the electronics firm Nvidia and IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence division, varied wildly.

Another proposal contemplated the use of virtual reality and motion-sensing seats to give occupants the feeling of driving a sports car, even when they were simply ridinBMW is experimenting with keeping instruments at a low height. When necessary, the “driver” or responsible party would interact with controls through a holographic projection that would appear to hover closer to eye level in space, meaning they would not need to take their eyes off the road while adjusting the temperature or changing radio stations.

To confirm that a command was registered, the driver would receive haptic feedback transmitted in space, but while it would feel as if one were touching a button on an Android smartphone, the user would not physically be touching anything.

When the vehicle is in fully autonomous mode, the windshield could be turned into a wide-screen display.

In an autonomous vehicle, “we can push technology into the background and only make it present when it’s needed,” said Holger Hampf, BMW’s head for user experience. One thing the carmaker does not envision: swiveling, rear-facing seats. “When you reverse the seats you can induce motion sickness,” Hampf said.