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If you've engaged in any commercial air travel lately you know that it's not a very good time from the crowds at the security lines to those super cramped seats.
It just sucks from the beginning to end.
And if you are on a short haul flight you can easily spend more time standing in line than actually up in the air.
There's got to be a better way and Volvo thinks they've found it with this, the 360 C Concept.
It's a fully autonomous vision for a future of personal transportation.
We've come here to Gothenburg, Sweden to corporate HQ to take a closer look.
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Now there's a lot going here design wise, from the fins at the back to the cross hatch wheels and the Thor's hammer headlights, but there are a couple really interesting design elements that set this apart from any other autonomous concept we've seen before and the big thing is this LED band that goes all the way around the car that gives the car it's name.
It's called the communication band And this is what Volvo thinks will make this car able to be actually talking to pedestrians and give them an indication of what's going on.
With this band the car can say to pedestrians I see you, I'm slowing down or I'm speeding up.
And that, combined with some kind of inception like future sci-fi sounding sound effects enables this car to communicate with those outside of the car.
But, also to communicate with people inside the car to give them confidence about what the car is about to do.
To see a little bit more of that we're gonna have to step over there because I should get in this car, it's just the model and the door don't actually work.
As interesting as the 360 C is on the outside The really interesting stuff is happening on the inside and this is an electric car, it's got a battery pack in the floor, so that gives the Volvo a nice flat space to work with, and because it is fully autonomous they don't need to worry about steering wheels or pedals or any of that stuff.
And they're showing us four different concepts for what they could do in a car like this.
There's a living area, there's a work area, there's this crazy night club scene they showed us with room for champagne bottles.
And then there's this, which is like a future vision for a sleeping car.
Now in here we have storage for your luggage, you can put your clothes in here.
There's another drawer that you can open up to pull out your dinner and even your breakfast if you're staying overnight.
And, then in the bottom you open up that drawer and you can pull out your bedding.
You can sit in the seat and watch some high definition Netflix and do some binging there if you want to or put the seat all the way back and relax, and have a nice night sleep.
Volvo even invented a special safety blanket for this car that they say will keep you safe in the instance of a crash which could be possible because this car It is expected to have to co-exist with human drivers and pedestrians.
So, it's not such a far future that we've all been replaced just yet.
Being a fully driverless car, this isn't the kind of thing you should expect to see on the road anytime soon.
In fact, we saw some dates in 2023, 2024 floating around, even that may be optimistic.
Another thing is this isn't the kind of car that you're actually expected to buy.
Volvo thinks it go partner with companies like Uber or [UNKNOWN] to allow access to car like this where you bring up an app, hit a button and it will just show up.
But the most interesting perhaps is that Volvo thinks, this is a more a conversation start of an actual product.
They actually want this band to become a standard that other manufacturers can use to develop a language to talk with pedestrians and to talk with other drivers when these autonomous cars come to the road.
What kind of conversations that starts?
I don't know just yet, but what I do know is I have a very long flight tomorrow, and I would much rather hop into one of these.
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