ATNMBL, the electric vehicle that asks "Where can I take you?"
Autonomobile - Click above for gallery
As a user of the terrible (IMHO) Google G1 phone, the news that the design team responsible for the look of the handset was releasing images for a new concept vehicle called the Autonomobile (alternately, the ATNMBL) didn't exactly inspire confidence. Reading over the ideas that Mike and Maaike used to create the ATNMBL, though, shows that one bad product - and the G1's main problem might be the Android software more than the design - shouldn't prohibit one from trying again.
Mike and Maaike tried to convey with the Autonomobile that we're approaching "the end of driving." The "auto" part of the name hints at the autonomous, self-driving nature of the all-electric vehicle. Instead of steering, braking and watching for traffic, you can sit in the living room-like interior and watch TV after telling car where you want to go. The car's initial question when someone gets in is "Where can I take you?" and the occupants can request that the car drive fast, efficiently or along a scenic route.
Since the electric drivetrain is compact, with motors hidden in each wheel and batteries in the floor and solar panels on the roof, the ATNMBL has wrap-around seating for seven but the overall size is smaller than most cars on the road today. There's more on the design of the ATNMBL over at Core77. Don't look for these on the streets just yet. Mike and Maaike dreamt up the concept to meet our transportation needs in 2040.
Gallery: ATNMBL
[Source: Mike and Maaike, Core77, Reuters]
PRESS RELEASE:
ATNMBL - The End of Driving
ATNMBL is a concept vehicle for 2040 that represents the end of driving and explores an alternative approach to car design. Upon entering ATNMBL, you are presented with a simple question: "Where can I take you?" There is no steering wheel, brake pedal or drivers seat. ATNMBL drives for you.
Electric powered, solar assist, with wrap-around seating for seven, ATNMBL offers living and/or working comfort, views, conversations, entertainment, and social connectedness. The vehicle is designed from the inside out with elements influenced by architecture and domestic interior spaces. The ATNMBL proposes a new standard of performance, one of timesaving and quality of life rather than speed, styling and acceleration.
The ATNMBL project is meant to provoke thought and encourage important conversations about the car industry's next destination. We believe a shift must take place from styling cars to redefining them. We are at an unprecedented crossroads: With industrial, financial, and environmental challenges also come unprecedented new opportunities and amazing new technologies.
DesignFrom the outside, ATNMBL looks like micro-architecture. Large windows, a pitched roof and asymmetrical from every view, it is designed without any reference to automobiles of the past. In contrast to today's automobiles, where much of the car's space is reserved for engine and drive train, ATNMBL's mechanical components are densely packed and simplified, providing dramatically more interior space in a vehicle that is shorter than most cars on the road today. Electric motors in each wheel provide all-wheel drive. Electric power is stored underneath the seating and floor with additional power provided by solar panels on the roof. Within a gridded pattern on the front and rear is an array of headlights, tail lights and sensors.
Passengers enter ATNMBL from the curb side through an electric glass sliding door into a standing-height entryway. Inside, the seating arrangement is a direct reference to the familiar living-room setting of a couch, side chair and low table. Riders are oriented towards each other and to the view outside through the large floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides. Centrally oriented is a large flat display that features live trip information, maps, and entertainment. The display can slide up to reveal a bar behind. A new and comprehensive sense of control is introduced through voice recognition and a touch screen remote control (or one's personal phone), offering riders a wide range of trip planning, ride sharing and performance settings that can be very detailed for those who want elaborate control or extremely simple for those who would rather just relax and enjoy the ride.
Summary of Features:
• fully electric powered plus solar assist
• driverless navigation via GPS, Lidar, radar, stereo camera, accelerometers
• wrap-around seating for 7
• voice recognition and remote for real-time control/ input
• large display for info, searches, browsing, communication
• open-source software with downloadable apps for carpool and carshare through social networking, pre-loaded trips, city tours, virtual drivers, etc.
• live trip info on mini display
• electric door, standing height entryway
• all wheel drive with motors in each wheel
• very few mechanical parts (drive by wire)
• bar
About Mike and Maaike
Mike and Maaike is an industrial design studio that takes an experimental approach to design, creating progressive solutions for high and low tech products, furniture, wearables, environments, and vehicles. Maaike Evers is Dutch; Mike Simonian, Californian. Their distinct backgrounds and unique approach create strong conceptual foundations and a clear point of view. Equally inspired by the tradition of craft and the potential of industry, Mike and Maaike have designed and developed complex high-tech products as well as artful and personal objects. The studio, which has received recognition and awards from design publications and museums around the world, is based in San Francisco. Mike and Maaike partner with people, organizations and companies who value an informed, experimental approach to design and the unexpected results it brings.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
nrb 9:19PM (7/07/2009)
I bet it would work just as well in an ICE vehicle.
I've always liked the idea of a car that would drive for me. It'd make my commute a lot more tolerable. Yea,there's public transportation, but that literally takes 2-3 times as long as driving myself.
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Snoopy 11:20PM (7/07/2009)
Good thing they're planning it for 2040. I think it's a bit ahead of its time.
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Nixon 12:13AM (7/08/2009)
So if you get shit-faced blotto drunk and get pulled over, can you beat the drunken driving ticket by saying you weren't really driving?
I can see a market for that.
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ufgrat 12:34AM (7/08/2009)
Yes, I've always wanted to roam around in a large acrylic paperweight.
Besides... that car would never pass anything vaguely resembling automotive regulations in this country. Ralph Nader killed this car 75 years before it's birth. ;)
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Blacksabre 6:37AM (7/08/2009)
Yeah, but just wait til the NHTSA and IIHS get done testing this thing.
To be legal, it'll have to weigh three tons, and then only be able to go 24 miles at 25 mph...and cost five grand a year to insure.
It's a cute idea...it's unsurvivable in any accident with a normal car.
NHTSA and the IIHS are absolutely responsible for the current condition of the auto companies. Someone may have said 'there oughta be a law...", but the NHTSA makes wayyy too many of them. Cars today are bloated, overweight and cost the moon because the NHTSA likes to play big brother.
Here's a funny tidbit. A 1970 Cadillac ElDorado, with no side bars, no air bags and no crushable bumpers, would get three stars for head on crash safety. Why? Because it weighs nearly two-and-a-half tons.
Thank you, NHTSA. You'll save my life, to live in poverty.
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EV-1 6:57AM (7/08/2009)
Over twenty years ago, this vision came to a person I know, in the form of an idea embryo.
The sample illustration may look strange (or worse), but
THE IDEA IS FLAWLESS.
Anyone ridiculing this concept, have got their prioritys backwards or simply aren't in harmony with life.
Commersialism have been let loose to the point where pollution and congestion have brought our transport system to the verge of self-destruct.
This idea is based on good sense.
Gasoline burners with lots of horsepower that you have to drive yourself (and maybe kill yourself - or others) have been sold to us, the people, by greedy profit-seekers for OVER A CENTURY. And lame politicians have just been standing watching: they obviously lack visions. How is it that the American car industry so overwhelmingly have dominated the build of infrastructure? "In God we trust" printed on the MONEY !?
Americans are not stupid. There IS a way to vastly improved transportation - there just have to be incentives to start the transformation >>> it's not one day too early (rather, it's many days and years late, although not too late!)
You'd want to combine this system with trains to carry the vehicle for long distance, battery charging lanes in citys, automatic self-parking in automated storagehouses, and tunnels in dense down-town areas leaving space to the people (and plants).
Personally, I wouldn't exactly watch TV, but either go online and work my 'puter, videochat w friends, take a nap, have a meal, or listen to music.
I love driving. But it's a long time since playing in public roads in a "car" was on my wishlist. I love riding a motorcycle on a track - but that's another story.
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Chris M 3:56PM (7/08/2009)
Sorry, but there is one rather serious flaw to the idea. Our technology simply isn't up to the task, no existing computer or other automated system can deal with unpredictable drivers and pedestrians and bicycles, and unexpected obstacles in the road, in real time, at reasonable speeds. That means no "self driving" car on public roads at any cost. Political/economic rants won't change that.
But there is a way around that problem. By using an elevated guideway, safely above traffic and with no pedestrians and few if any obstacles, a fully automated transit system can be built and safely operated, using existing technology. The idea is called "Personal Rapid Transit" or PRT. See:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/prtquick.htm
for a short description.
Serge 9:22AM (7/08/2009)
Design need improvement ;), but the idea is the right one. Now build it :)
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Anonymouse 12:10PM (7/08/2009)
Waaay too much drag. And as someone who's seen a person standing in an RV when the brakes were slammed on, making cars like a living room is *not* a good idea. So unless these vehicles are flawless and will never get into an accident (icy roads, wildlife crossing the street, etc)... um, no.
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James 2:22PM (7/08/2009)
Many of these features (sized for small group use, compact design, driverless navigation, electric operation, battery powered) are available in the ULTra Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system being installed at Heathrow. http://www.ultraprt.com However, ULTra is a mass transit system so 1) it's not your personal vehicle and 2) it isn't door-to-door like a car would be.
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Paddy 3:04PM (7/08/2009)
By 2040 this concept might be a possible substitute for a personal taxi, bus or trolley for a repetitive trip for a wealthy individual who has lost the right to drive. With the appropriate design and placement of seat belts and air bags etc it may be good for a family jaunt around the Zoo or fabulous garden when some members can't walk or as a connecting link from one mode of transport to another for First Class passengers. But most of all it sounds great for those people who can't read a map or remember how to get where they want to go. The proportion of one person vehicles on the road may suggest the biggest problem for this idea.
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Chris M 3:40PM (7/08/2009)
There was a Federal research project on hiway automation, and they were able to get self-driving cars to drive on a closed track and even automatically"platoon" together, driving at 65 mph with very close spacing to increase hiway capacity and reduce drag. Basic navigation and steering has been solved, as has cooperation with other automated vehicles. But the project was shelved as they couldn't get the vehicles to deal with unexpected objects in the road, nor could the automated vehicles deal with unpredictable manually driven vehicles. Computers still have severe problems with interperating what their cameraa see, pattern recognition is nowhere near good enough to handle freeway traffic.
But there is a way around that problem. By using special guideways isolated from pedestrian and vehicular traffic, suspended overhead or run underground, an automated transit system can be built that operates successfully at reasonably high speeds. The concept is called "Personal Rapid Transit" (PRT) See:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/prtquick.htm
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rpvitiello 1:45AM (7/09/2009)
oh my enough on the PRT i feel like i am being bombarded by ads for the system from a company that builds them!
They are not the same, the PRT are an alternative to the subway or bus or public transit system. They are not an alternative to the private passenger car.
This is to a car as a PRT is to the bus.
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youngsanger 9:36PM (8/05/2009)
I didn't get the part of 2040? These guys are not very good. There are prototypes that do it today.
Today's computer vision can recognize and track cars and pedestrians.
Today's computer vision can track a line painted in the road and keep a wheel properly aligned at speeds up to 140 MPH.
Today tram bots are operating in two locations, shuttling passengers with no driver. Deliver bots are working extensively in closed environments delivering manufacturing inventory.
This stuff works just fine today, and will contiue working just fine. Infrastructure costs are near zero because they work just fine on city streets. Street Bots do like signal assist, communication between the street bot and the digital signaling and traffic control is cheap and effective.
Bots can delivery groceries at 1/8 the cost of personal driving. Street bots will be on the market this year.
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Dankoozy 6:25PM (8/05/2009)
The future is boring, I'd rather have something like an ariel atom that i can drive myself. boring urbanites with facebook accounts can go around in one of these things but I certainly don't want one
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