Toyota’s Concept-i autonomous car winks at you, remembers the minutiae of your interests, and suggests detours to hang out with your friends: all in the name of getting you to trust its self-driving talents. Revealed at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, CA. this week, on the one hand it’s a striking design study intended to explore the new possibilities unlocked when you’re liberated from the tyranny of everyday driving. At the same time, though, it addresses a more fundamental issue, around trust in technology and the fear of the expert. I caught up with Ian Cartabiano, lead designer at the Toyota CALTY studio, and William Chergosky, interior lead designer, to find out why Concept-i is so important.
Space, as we’ve seen both autonomous and electric concepts flirt with before, is a different luxury when compared to traditional gasoline vehicles. An electric drivetrain can be spread in different places – the batteries under the floor; the motors pushed to the extremes of the wheels or integrated into them completely – versus an internal combustion engine, which suddenly opens up a cabin in new ways. Meanwhile, the way you use that space changes when you don’t have to focus on driving and can allow the car to drive itself.
The scissor-lift doors are a show-car spectacle, but do emphasize that interior volume. Meanwhile, the way the interior structure of the dashboard extends out and through into the curve of the car’s bodywork – the glass wrapping around that shape – is indicative of one of the more unusual design aspects: Toyota’s design team started with the interior space first, and then figured out the exterior around it. Usually, it would be the other way around.
You might associate gold on cars with gaudy Lexus badging, but Toyota has been heavy-handed with metallic effects to underscore the premium intent. Through it, and the porcelain white bodywork that’s almost surgically-inspired in its Space 2001 purity, glow multicolored LEDs. When you start the Concept-i up, light flows from the cabin outwards, streaming into the exterior bodywork. [slashgear]
