Are windowless, driverless cars just too weird?

For the last 80-some years, the model car has been pretty standard. The tail fins and bucket seats came and went, but there were almost always four wheels, two headlights and windows, plenty of big, clear windows ringing the car. All of that will change soon because the robot cars upend so many parts of the game that the designers can begin again with a clean file in their design software. Reconsidering the role of car windows may be the most obvious.

Windows won't be necessary when there's no human inside who needs to see to pick a path. The autonomous cars will use five, ten or even more cameras looking at every angle and these cameras don't need to be much bigger than the dots on the back of a phone. Some may use elaborate laser range finders that currently live perched on the roof of some of the prototypes but these whirling gadgets don't need windows either. Read more...