What do you imagine a driverless electric taxicab would look like? With no need for a driver and an underfloor drivetrain, minimal requirements for drag-cheating aerodynamics, the available space can be maximised for passengers, luggage and accessibility for important things like wheelchairs and pushchairs. Seats need not even face forwards, creating the ultimate room on wheels.
Look up practically every conceptual vision from the past two or three decades and this is what you get. Even legendary cinematic futurist Syd Mead, along with production designer Tom Southwell, recognised as much when they created the (non-autonomous) Metrokab for Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner.
