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Rinspeed reveals in-car garden...

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Rinspeed Oasis concept car previews potential future autonomous vehicle direction.

What's the news?

Swiss manufacturer Rinspeed is known for building outrageous concept cars, and its latest creation seems to follow that trend. Christened the Oasis, it offers a glimpse of what form personal urban transport may take in the future. While features like a small garden (we're not joking) may seem completely ludicrous, there are some very clever ideas packed into the car.

Let's get the basics out of the way first; the Oasis is a two-seat, self-driving, fully electric city car. Driven by two ZF motors housed within the 20-inch wheels, it can turn around almost within its own length. R2D2 from Star Wars is quoted as the slightly unusual design inspiration, and if you squint quite hard it sort of looks a bit like a horizontal robot.

Inside, you get the aforementioned garden, which Rinspeed suggest has "enough space for growing radishes or even little Bonsai trees". There's a head-up display for the curved windscreen, which can vary the graphics shown depending on whether autonomous or manual driving modes are selected, and the steering wheel folds down to increase space. A host of suppliers are namechecked and there's even a wooden floor. It's sort of like driving (or being driven in, as it were) a super-trendy and painfully minimalist apartment.

Anything else?

Connectivity is the main point of the Oasis. The car is fully linked through all social media channels, so that it knows where you are, what you're doing, how long you're doing it for and how to get you to your next destination. Rinspeed even talks about the possibility of owners sharing their Oasis, giving the example of your car dropping you to the airport and then being hailed taxi-like by two complete strangers to whisk them into town. Quite how that would work out in real life remains to be seen, and it rather relies on a lot of trust and a lack of imagination from potential buyers...

Safety and traffic aids enabled by the autonomous capability feature prominently, as well as the ability to pick and choose travelling companions based on similar interests and professions. It can even provide a personal assistant function, communicating with the owner's hypothetical smart home to set lighting and heating to the desired levels.

The Rinspeed concept will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and NAIAS in Detroit in January, followed by an appearance at the Geneva Motor Show in March.

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Published on December 7, 2016