It's a new electric concept car from Nissan called Pivo 2. I don't know what happened to Pivo 1. I assume it's being driven by Willy Wonka or living in a Miyazaki movie.
The British paper, The Register, quotes Masahiko Tabe of Nissan's advanced vehicle department group, as saying, "You can go everywhere without worrying about your driving skills," which is certainly a load off my mind.
The car also includes a Robotic Agent, which will converse with the driver to help make "every journey less stressful," says the Nissan press release. It would be like having your own English-speaking R2-D2 crammed into your dashboard. Which is to say, it would be awesome.
The Register adds:
The Robotic Agent apparently integrates various technologies, not least the ability to monitor the driver's face to detect undesirable conditions such as road rage or unconsciousness. It can then respond with helpful or soothing suggestions and chitchat.
"Are you sleeping? There's a cafe 500m ahead," the dashboard droid might chirp, in a case of doziness at the wheel. It wasn't clear from the report whether this was meant in the sense of "You look like you could do with a coffee," or "Holy shit, you're going to hit that cafe".
There's a video out to promote the new car, but I'm fairly sure whoever produced it was high enough to embarrass the ghost of John Belushi. It's by far the most unenthusiastic, sleep-inducing, Kubrikian promo I've ever seen. Check it out for yourself...and be sure to have a pillow handy.
2 comments:
It's ugly and pretty much never going to make it into mass production... but I'm pretty sure I need one.
It is ugly! But so strangely cute at the same time! I, too, want one desperately. (I'm pretty suire having a talking car wouldn't be as cool as they make it seem on TV, though. probably pretty annoying in real life.)
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