Cadillac Shows Autonomous Luxury Pod And Single Passenger Drone Concepts

Cadillac is joining the growing stream of automakers who are investing in autonomous transportation pods. Its hook, though, will be luxury.

Volkswagen and Toyota, along with newcomers like Zoox have advertised autonomous mobility pods, and even GM has with the Cruise Automation. None of them, as far as I know, has a faux fireplace, though.

Cadillac is selling this concept as “the spot between parties” in a video that appears to show off a couple of other features, like a camera to take pictures while you zip around town. It will also, apparently, take a biometric reading of passengers to set climate, seat-heating, and humidity.

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The pod also has a big glass roof to “keep passenger connected to the outside world” and a row of bench seating along the front and sides of the passenger compartment. These are supplemented by two recliners at the back of the compartment.

Based on the Cruise Automation pod, this concept offers a glimpse into a future where autonomous cars can provide autonomous vehicles that don’t even require vehicles to have steering wheels.

If being on the road at all is a little too pedestrian for you, though, you can also rise above it all with the Vertical Take-Off and Landing Drone is an octo-copter drone for humans.

The single-seat drone is, according to Cadillac’s imagination, capable of speeds of up to 56 mph. The point, according to GM, is to help satisfy its the zero congestion part of GM’s zero emission, zero congestion, zero death vision for the future.

Again, though, Cadillac isn’t the first luxury brand to reveal an electric drone. Audi has taken to the conceptual skies with a flying taxi co-designed by Airbus and Italdesign. On the ground, meanwhile, it will face competition from the likes of Volvo, which promised first-class travel with its driverless pod.