This is Sedric, Volkswagen’s newest concept for the
future of autonomous driving. Sedric (as in self-driving car, get it?)
is fully autonomous, meaning it has no steering wheel or pedals, and it
can be summoned at the push of a button for ride-hailing trips, a la
Uber and Lyft.
VW claims that Sedric is the first vehicle to be designed
for fully autonomous driving “from scratch.” Of course, it’s important
to note that Sedric is just a concept, meaning it does not exist
anywhere but in the imaginations of a few VW engineers and designers.
Which may explain why Sedric looks so angry. Cheer up, Sedric! Maybe
someday you’ll be a real car.
Volkswagen Group AG, the parent group of VW, revealed Sedric at the Geneva Auto Show today. Here’s the video from the event.
VW says it’s using Sedric to highlight the importance of
self-driving vehicles to the future of the company. The accompanying
press materials are an alphabet soup of buzzwords like “individual
mobility,” “sustainability,” and “cross-brand ideas platform.” But it’s
hard to pay attention to that when this thing looks so much like a
pissed-off toaster. Seriously, Sedric, you need to chill out. Too many
people have road rage these days. We don’t need cars with road rage,
too.
Despite Sedric’s seemingly irritable countenance, VW says
it will serve as a “friend and companion” for your family. This appears
to be part of a growing trend among automakers to transform the family
vehicle into something akin to a pet. At CES earlier this year, Toyota unveiled its Concept-i vehicle,
complete with built-in artificial intelligence called “Yui.” Like
Sedric, the Concept-i had something approaching a face. Both cars have
the ability to “wink” thanks to digitized headlights — which is
excellent news for everyone who thinks we need more cars that act like
cheesy uncles.
The interior is unlike any car on the road today. It
looks more like a ‘70s-era cocktail lounge than your average transit
van. There are hints of other concept cars in Sedric, like the garden of
succulents on the dash like Rinspeed’s Oasis and suicide doors for ease of entry like the Chrysler Portal. The yellow interior is reminiscent of VW’s other big concept this year, the I.D. Buzz microbus.
Volkswagen says Sedric can be summoned via this fancy
button, which changes color and vibrates when the vehicle arrives. This
is meant to guide people with impaired vision, which is one of the
biggest selling points for fully autonomous cars. “The Button is the
link between the user and Sedric,” the company says.
Sedric was “devised, designed, developed and constructed”
by two separate think tanks within the larger VW organization, one in
Potsdam and the other in Wolfsburg. Design elements and technological
features in Sedric will appear in VW’s production-ready cars in the
years to come. So Sedric is less a fully formed vehicle, and more of an
idea board from which the company can pick and choose as it develops new
cars in the future.
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