Rinspeed has a habit of polarizing visitors at its Geneva Motor Show stand with its atypical concept studies and production cars, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with its new XchangeE autonomous prototype built around the Tesla Model S.

You won’t see a whole lot of changes on the outside other than the olive green paint job with yellow gold accents, new front bumper that skips the grille, new rear bumper, plus 20-inch wheels and side skirts, because Rinspeed focused most of its efforts on the interior, which it describes as, “an office and living room on wheels”.

The company’s CEO and founder, Frank M. Rinderknecht, says Rinspeed wanted to re-think the interior of an autonomous car.

“So far hardly anyone has taken this to its logical conclusion from the perspective of the driver,” he said. “After all, traveling in a driverless car will no longer require me to stare at the road, but will let me spend my time in a more meaningful way.”

So, Rinspeed asked its designers the following question: “How will the interior of a vehicle have to be designed to let the now largely unburdened driver make optimal use of the gain in time?”

The answer is what you see in the pictures below, with the first thing capturing our attention being the steering wheel that can slide towards the center of the dash to improve space. If you don’t want to see the road ahead or play with the 1.2-meter-wide display strip on the dashboard, both front passengers can swivel their seats around and drop the rear seat backs down to create a couch of sorts. For their entertainment, Rinspeed fitted a retractable 32-inch 4K monitor in the rear.

Naturally, the XchangE is fully networked with the outside world, while other highlights include the bespoke Plexiglas roof with 358 individually controlled LEDs in the headliner and another 98 in the instrument panel, plus a pull out keyboard mounted under the dashboard.

By John Halas

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