If astronaut is a person trained and work in space, then shouldn’t we, urban dwellers, called Urbanaut? I do not take credit for the word. The credit goes to MINI. Urbanaut is MINI’s vision of future autonomous vehicle, and boy, do I love to hate it.
Why the hate? Because, reading about the MINI Vision Urbanaut is like watching Star Trek movies. Or like getting excited about Tony Stark’s palm-sized arc reactor technology. You know its not gonna happen. At least not in our lifetime.
I mean, seriously, illuminated wheels? Nope. Not going to happen. And fully autonomous vehicle with the option of manual driving? Nope. Also not going to happen. We ain’t in I, Robot, yet. I don’t see it happening anytime soon, TBH. There are too many kinks to iron out in the area of self-driving technology and that’s not to mention the countless parameters while the road that only humans can deal with. Hell, sometimes, humans can’t even do better.
Plus, how many times have we seen radical design concepts ever made it to production? Nope. Never, ever. I could be wrong. Things could change. OK. Not going to lie. I wrote the last sentence with serious apprehension.
Anyhoo, if the MINI Vision Urbanaut were to be produced in future, it would be the largest MINI yet. No height was given, but MINI said it stretches 4.46 meter (14.6 feet) in length.
The highlight is possibly the interior which has several uses. It can be a mobile living room if you wish, or it a place for comfortable sleepover, or it could be rearranged into a regular minivan, with you behind the wheels.
The interior’s concept isn’t farfetched, if we may add. But automated driving is far off and so are fancy illuminated wheels. If you like, you can learn more this autonomous minivan concept HERE.
All images courtesy of BMW Group.
