Autonomous vehicle outfit Cruise, which is funded by General Motors and Honda, recently unveiled their concept for the future. Completely self-driving, it doesn鈥檛 even have a way for people to drive it, lacking a steering wheel and pedals. The vision, as described by the company, is to 鈥渕ove beyond the car,鈥� and part of that vision is having it not as a private vehicle, but, to quote Cruise, 鈥渁n experience you can share.鈥�
Effectively, they have re-invented the taxi.
But, unfortunately, they鈥檝e also done a pretty bad job at re-inventing the taxi.
The issue I have with it is not the autonomous technology, even if I still don鈥檛 trust it. As a regular, frequent user of all manner of technology, I鈥檝e developed a deep, unshakable distrust of technology. But for the purposes of this column, I鈥檒l put that aside and assume it will work as wonderfully as they say it will.
The problem is that it鈥檚 supposed to be designed, from the ground up as a people-carrying machine. They touted the ability to remove the wheel and pedals as a great space-saving innovation. And then they showed a vehicle that can seat four comfortably, six in a pinch.
Not every taxi needs to seat a ton of people, for a lot of runs seating three or four is perfectly fine. However, if you鈥檙e doing a purpose-built taxi, you鈥檙e going to want to design around the fact that it is going to be used by a variety of operations with a number of needs. In this case, it makes sense to design a vehicle with seating flexibility, especially since you鈥檙e making something which is supposed to take full advantage of added space. Which means, at a minimum, the capability of carrying more than six people at a time, especially in the same footprint of a typical SUV.
The design of the car does have a big open area between the two bench seats, which are facing each other. One might think 鈥榯his could easily be for wheelchairs,鈥� and since wheelchair-capable taxis are generally in shorter supply - and significantly more expensive to buy - than regular taxis, this should be something that is emphasized, and used as a selling point that justifies the wasted-but-ample space of the current layout.
This is not being touted by Cruise as the reason behind their layout, and is not given a mention in most coverage of the vehicle. This isn鈥檛 to say that it wasn鈥檛 considered, and the car would be very easily modified to be accessible if it鈥檚 not already, but they certainly aren鈥檛 talking about it. In touting the advantages of a wide side opening - great for a wheelchair - they specifically state that it鈥檚 wide enough for someone to step in when someone else is stepping out. No mention of people on wheels at all, an oversight that seems particularly egregious mostly because that would be the only logical reason for using the layout they did.
Given the exhaustive amount of text the company devotes to claims about creating a better world, you would think they would leap at the chance to mention making it more accessible.
This is a car meant for 鈥榮haring鈥� designed by people who don鈥檛 like to share. When I look at it, all I see are limits, oversights and missed opportunities. If their blind spots include people in wheelchairs or people who need a large passenger capacity 鈥� two of the biggest markets for this type of vehicle 鈥� what are the oversights going to be in terms of their autonomous software?
Because in reality, I don鈥檛 distrust technology, instead I don鈥檛 trust the people who make it work. And when I look at Cruise, I see a lot of blind spots, a lot of things that they either didn鈥檛 consider or didn鈥檛 think were important. That鈥檚 also going to make me leery about using their vehicle or sharing the road with it.
