HBO’s nearish-future robo-horror show Westworld is coming back, and its focus is moving from a synthetic Old West populated with sexy and deadly robots covered in biological skin into the mainstream world of the near future, which seems to be populated with not just sexy and deadly robots and people, but also cars. Friend of Gizmodo and noted automotive designer John Frye spotted some interesting vehicles on the street in LA, and it appears they’re cars for the upcoming season of Westworld.
While we’ve encountered some interesting cars in Westworld before, the setting of an artificial late 1800s-based theme park limited just how many cars were seen. The new season won’t have that limitation, as you can see in the trailer:
The vehicles that John got a picture of during their shoot can be seen in the trailer as well:
Based on the design (evil giant Twizy?), I’d say these are intended to be some sort of electric, autonomous vehicles. Based on the clear sides and seating arrangement, I suspect these are more shared taxi-type vehicles and not privately-owned cars. I think you’d want more privacy in a personal autonomous vehicle, for all kinds of reasons.
It’s interesting to see the use of tweels instead of conventional pneumatic tires; we saw this on the dune buggies in last season, which suggests that perhaps tweels have become standard, or at least common, in this future.
These vehicles appear to be built on some sort of skateboard-like chassis, with a large “equipment box” area at the rear, likely to house the motor and other associated electronics. The elongated-hexagon body seems to be just dropped onto the chassis, possibly suggesting some sort of modularity.
Do they come in any other colour than black?
There’s a lot of other interesting vehicles in the trailer, too:
…like this drone-like quadcopter design. It’s quite sleek-looking, and seems much more practical than a conventional helicopter.
There’s also this nice, oddball FJ55 Land Cruiser here:
I actually like the mismatched doors, there.
A bit more unexpected is the Kubelwagen there—it appears there’s another, WWII-themed park that this must exist in. That one must rake in the cash—who wouldn’t want to kill a bunch of filthy robot Nazis?
That same world has some great cars—look at this lovely MG TD.
There are some interesting non-human-passing robot designs shown, too, like this utilitarian fella having a very, very bad day.
The autonomous glass-box designs that John caught pictures of are interesting in that it feels like that general type of design is rapidly becoming the default form of what people think futuristic AVs will look like.
I suppose it’s a pretty rational design, especially for shared-use vehicles, but I sort of hope the actual future introduces a little more charm into them.
It looks like the new season starts on March 15, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if there’s any other interesting future automotive ideas buzzing around, being hijacked by angry, sexy flesh-bots.