Last week we drove headlong into an exhibition at the Turin Motor Show that investigated the possible futures of cars. This week, Rolls-Royce made like Neil Armstrong and took a giant leap into that future with the Vision 100. The luxury car firm debuted the Vision 100 at a special event in London, echoing something its parent company BMW did back in March. We’re talking about the BMW Vision Next 100 of course and indeed we’ll be seeing this from all BMW brands but perhaps Rolls-Royce is even bolder in its vision than BMW itself.
The Vision 100 ditches a good deal of the familiar ‘car-like’ trappings in favor of an exterior that feels more like an otherworldly rectangular pod. When we saw ‘car-like’ trappings, what we mean is that the Vision 100 is a fully autonomous zero-emissions vehicle. Seriously, there’s no steering wheel or instrument panel here (there is instead a cabin-wide OLED display)… Yet there’s still that iconic Spirit of Ecstasy gleaming at the front, marking it as, unmistakably, a Rolls-Royce. Also, at close to 6 meters in length and more than a meter tall, the two-door Vision 100 comes from a future where bigger is clearly better.
Speaking of the Spirit of Ecstasy, there will be one inside the vehicle too. This happens to be Eleanor – the virtual personal assistant that can be viewed on the visual display in the interior. She’ll track your personal tastes, make recommendations, and run your appointments. All this falls in with one of the basic tenets of luxury, which is to do nothing that you don’t want to do. Even the design for the interior is set up like a comfortable cocoon with fine wool, leather, woods and a sofa. Yes, this vision of the future comes with a couch because someone at Rolls-Royce was paying to all those jokes car writers make about the Goodwood firm’s penchant for creating luxury living rooms on wheels.
“The grand arrival of the Rolls-Royce Vision Next 100 boldly points to a bright future for our marque where our patrons’ individual demands for complete and authentic personalization will be met through an exquisite fusion of technology, design and hallmark Rolls-Royce craftsmanship,” said CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös at the concept’s launch. In coming up with the Vision 100, the design team led by Giles Taylor tried to imagine what cars would look like a century into the future. They decided that four key ingredients were important – personal vision; an effortless journey; a grand sanctuary; and the grand arrival.
Well, this is only the beginning. As things develop we can easily expect more automation, more convenience, and more exclusivity. In keeping up with their vision of the future, Rolls-Royce even released a 3D video to showcase exactly what the model can accomplish. You can view it down below.
The post Future Drive: Rolls-Royce Vision 100 appeared first on LUXUO.