#6. 2001 Toyota Pod Concept Car – AI Never Comes Back to Haunt Humanity
Source: Wikimedia
Sometimes companies want to create a concept car that shows off their ability to integrate with other companies and suggest new ideas. Sometimes it works. Sometimes people create the Toyota Pod.
What Toyota Was Thinking
Toyota thought about things. They realized they haven’t been doing nearly enough concept cars with speaker manufacturers. Toyota partnered with Sony because they wanted to create another “future” vehicle. Yet again the “future” coming out in a horrible vehicular way.
The vehicle attempted to put all the future tech they could into the Pod. Rather than normal car seats, people had to sit on four stools that could spin in 360 degrees. There was no real cargo space. Things just went in between the seats on the spaceship Pod. Rather than standard steering wheels, you had driving tablets that controlled the motor vehicle functions. While this is the kind of tech that could one day be implemented, it certainly wasn’t ready back in 2001 and looked like cheap plastic dinner plates.
Also, if we’re going to build a car that’s going to one day rise up against us, why not choose one that will, in essence, be weak and easy to fight. At least Toyota was thinking straight when they put in their AI. They put it in a vehicle that wouldn’t manage to fight back with any real oomph.
Source: Wikimedia
What The Public Thought of the Concept Car
It’s really hard to overlook when a car has a tail. People looked at the Pod and essentially everyone decided it’s better if the future doesn’t come. The tail looking like an on/off switch was a novelty, but then it started wagging. The thought that an early version of an AI-controlled the car and gave it emotions was fairly off-putting. Then again, the emotions only came out in a few colors. At least people knew to get nervous when the car LEDs were red. Then the Pod was angry at you!
