Maaike Evers and Mike Simonian are, together, the San Francisco design consultancy Mike and Maaike and are responsible for the G1 mobile phone (the first to feature the Google Android OS) were also part of the team that created the Xbox 360.
More recently they have turned their attentions to the world of car design and have produced the ATNMBL as an investigation into how a car designed without reference to the traditions and dogma of conventional automotive styling would look and function. Crucially, they also looked into what would happen if car no longer needed to be piloted by its human occupants.
The result, projected as being a solution viable in the year 2040, owes more to the disciplines of architecture and interior design than the works of Harley Earl or Nuccio Bertone. It’s tall enough to stand in, prodigiously glazed and devoid of the sculpture of an Audi TT or even the more practical (and in automotive engineering terms, avant-garde) Mercedes A-Class.
There will probably always be dyed-in-the-wool petrolheads that are sceptical of such concepts but there will probably also be plenty of people who would welcome the chance to use the time spent in traffic on their daily commute working, catching up on emails or even having breakfast instead of just staring at the rear bumper of the car ahead of them. In fact, there are probably plenty of petrolheads who would welcome the chance to hone their skills around a virtual Nürburgring with the latest edition of Gran Turismo whilst sitting in a traffic jam. Now that would be a commute.
See more after the jump.
Source: Autoblog
