What's all this about?
It's three interiors for the price of one, courtesy of Volvo.
I reckon you've been at the anti-freeze again. Please start talking sense.
Look, Volvo is developing self-driving cars, right? With a view to getting them on the roads by 2017, in Gothenburg at least. So does the boring, forward-facing, fixed upright seats cabin that suits a human-piloted car need to be carried over? Volvo thinks not.
So what is this precisely?
Called Concept 26 (named after the average daily commute time in, er... the US), it sees a new design of seat that can cradle its occupants through three stages: Drive, Create or Relax. In the first of these, the human has control of the car and there's a steering wheel on the dash. Switching to either of the other two sees the wheel retract away into the console, while a large screen emerges elsewhere. So the commuter can either work on it, with a specific seating position, in Create, or simply kick back and watch a bit of a film/some TV/a YouTube video of a cat larking about in Relax mode.
Is this likely to be on the market in the near future?
Well, probably not as soon as the self-driving Volvo arrives, but something like Concept 26 might be available in the 2020s. Perhaps.
Matt Robinson - 23 Nov 2015