Is that Bulbasaur on wheels? Nope, it's Volkswagen's new concept car.
If you're a fan of Pokémon, you just might see a familiar face in Volkswagen's first fully autonomous concept vehicle.
The ride is called Sedric (as in self-driving car), and let's be real, it looks like Bulbasaur with those wide-spaced "eyes." And it doesn't look like anything you'll find on the road today.
Sedric isn't meant to be controlled by a human driver. Instead, the all-electric concept is supposed to operate with full Level 5 autonomy, which means the system can handle all the work, and will only pick up riders when they summon it with the press of a button. The vehicle was made with ride sharing in mind, as the company claims that in the future, "intensively used vehicles" will cut traffic and energy consumption while increasing safety and sustainability.
Sedric made its debut at the Geneva Auto Show, where Volkswagen Group CEO Matthias Müller called it a "trailblazer" and an "idea platform" for the company's future autonomous innovations.
The concept is centered around opening up what VW is calling "the mobility experience" to everyone, but exactly what that means isn't clear. Sedric is an explicitly forward-looking design concept, so don't expect to be seeing any Bulbasaur lookalikes zipping up and down your block anytime soon. The company didn't give many details about how it might even be deployed on future streets, so for now it's totally theoretical.
But, some of the principles behind its autonomous shuttle system are already being embraced IRL. Earlier this year, self-driving shuttle buses hit the streets of Las Vegas in a pilot program expected to expand later this summer.
Sedric doesn't look like it'll ever be as much fun as another one of VW's recent concepts, the Electric Microbus, but if it ever hits the road, it could help to usher in an entirely new era of transportation.
Topics Self-Driving Cars
Brett Williams is a Tech Reporter at Mashable. He writes about tech news, trends and other tangentially related topics with a particular interest in wearables and exercise tech. Prior to Mashable, he wrote for Inked Magazine and Thrillist. Brett's work has also appeared on Fusion and AskMen, to name a few. You can follow Brett on Twitter @bdwilliams910.
