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This squared-off pod is Volkswagen's Sedric (SElf-DRIving Car), a concept of a Level Five autonomous car that could be on sale by 2025, primarily with ride-sharing fleets (such as Gett, in which Volkswagen has invested or MOIA, its own in-house mobility solutions company) but also for private purchase.
The least significant aspect of the Sedric is its 136hp electric drivetrain with a range of around 400km on one charge. No-one will care much about that when they're not doing the driving, and that's what Level Five autonomy means - you push a button on a fob to summon the Sedric, and it rolls up, you step in and off you go to your destination. No wheel. No pedals. No human intervention. There is a series of count-down lights to tell you how far away your personal Sedric is, and a system of vibrations to help the partially-sighted.
As the Sedric pulls up, you'll notice that it's LED lights do the same looking and winking that we've already seen on the ID and ID Buzz concepts. Then the two side doors open up wide, you step into the bamboo-lined cabin (complete with potted plants to help oxygenate the air) and off you go. There are two individual fixed seats on one side, and a pair of taxi-style seats with flip-up bases on the other, which can make way to make room for buggies or wheelchairs.
The idea of course is that this is fully robotic motoring. You don't need to do anything other than input a destination and the car's on-board LIDAR sensors (a mixture of laser and radar and there are five of them) and cameras (seven of those) take care of figuring out where to go and how to get there safely. You can instruct Sedric to take the kids to school, or to go and collect your shopping.
As you travel, the vast windscreen can be used either as a massive OLED infotainment screen, or as an augmented reality view to the world outside. Volkswagen's idea is for Sedric's technology to spread out to the other brands in its group, so expect to see Audi, SEAT, and Skoda variations on this theme too. Probably not Bugatti, though.
2025 has been spoken of as a vaguely possible date for a Sedric, or something like it, to be on sale, but that's a very airy-fairy timeline. The investment needed to get to Level Five autonomy is huge (Volkswagen has committed to putting billions into R&D) and others, such as Mercedes and Ford, reckon we're at best still 15 years away from such tech.
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