This Mercedes Self-Driving Car Is Awesomely Futuristic

The high-tech concept has laser displays and touch screen walls.

Mercedes F015

Mercedes F015
Photo: Mercedes-Benz

One challenge in writing about incredible futuristic concept cars like the Mercedes-Benz F015 is conveying just how different the experience of being a passenger inside it will differ from today’s rides. 

Fortunately, Tech Insider whipped up this video highlighting the features of this autonomous lounge-on-wheels, giving you a much clearer idea of what it is like to ride in the F015, or potentially some other car in the next decade.

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“The car is becoming a mobile living space,” explained Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, says in a statement. “Anyone who focuses solely on the technology has not yet grasped how autonomous driving will change our society.”

Mercedes F015
Photo: Mercedes-Benz

The F015’s cabin is practically lined with video displays, as the six different screens in the dashboard and doors create a digital arena of information flow to occupants. The front seats can swivel to face backward for conversations or forward for manual driving, if wanted. 

Photo: Mercedes-Benz

The car’s doors swing open to a wide 90-degree angle, and the rears are rear-hinged and latch separately from the fronts, providing easy access to the F015’s rolling lounge.

Photo: Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes selected a suitably futuristic hydrogen fuel cell as the F015’s propulsion source, supplementing it with a compact high-voltage battery for extra electric power for the car’s motors.

Photo: Mercedes-Benz

This vision of the future is startlingly similar to that of another future that was already supposed to have arrived. The General Motors Firebird II turbine-powered autonomous concept car of 1956 predicted a future of self-driving cars in 1976, as shown by this old-timey video.

Maybe this time around the future will actually arrive on schedule.

H/T: Tech Insider

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