Driving is sometimes not something everyone wants to do and when they do it they’re not all there all the time. Sometimes a good drive can be a fun time and driving through the streets feels like a powerful and emotive experience. But how often does this really happen to you? Most of the time the humdrum of driving is the boring part of being stuck in traffic and controlling this barrelling car becomes a nuisance. Luckily there has been a rise in self driving cars. Recently there’s been a really cool new car called the Etos. It is a concept car made from Swiss automaker Rinspeed. It wants to bring back the enjoyment of driving. The car is a sort of hybrid between switching from self driving and driving manually.
Here’s the kicker though, they’ve added a drone on the back of the car and a landing zone for it. The idea is get drivers enjoying the leisure of travel and that’s why they added a drone that can be controlled while the car is self driving. This is definitely a novel concept that is going to get a lot of people talking.
The Concept
Frank M Rinderknecht the owner of the idea, unveiled the idea outside of his alpine home this sports car. He states that “The digital world will provide the major and above all the disruptive innovations in automotive engineering. That is why nowadays all major car manufacturers and suppliers are present at the CES Consumer Electronics Show.”
The swiss maker of this car likes to approach self driving cars with the idea of the human passengers in mind. Afterall humans are still going to be passengers in these new vehicles of the future taking up space and looking for things to do inside the car. As the self driving movement flourishes and begins to enter the mainstream, more outlandish ideas like this one will become commonplace. Rinderknecht remarks “This process will likely lead to an adaptive, learning and intuitive control software. But it will be a long rocky road.” He is talking about the idea behind the new emerging market and the technologies that will come with this disruption.
An interesting new technical advancement in the Etos is the folding steering wheel that can come in and out when not driving the car. It instantly will disappear back into the dashboard when not in use. This creates a lot of space for the driver. If you notice the steering wheel is a major space holder in most modern cars. This is just one of the many ideas for the new interior of self driving cars. The Mercedes-Benz concept has a sort of lounge type area that is covered with tinted windows. This shows how many varying ideas they can have. In the car is also two 21.5-inch Ultra HD monitors that are adjustable and able to watch high definition television or any other sort of media.
The car’s futuristic look is reminiscent of the BMW i8. It’s got the fast capabilities and comes with a cool glass roof that helps house its drone landing zone in the back. The glass is exceptionally thin on the back and is the same one used in smartphones. The base of the car also comes with carbon fiber and will be on the forefront of futuristic cars.