Citroen has teamed up with the hotel chain Accor and the technology company JCDecaux to create a new future-gazing concept, which hopes to change the way we move around a city.
Over the course of several long lunch meetings, the three French firms came up with this – the Citroen Skate. It’s an autonomous EV platform, which has been designed to serve various purposes simply by changing the pod on top.
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That means the same platform could transport passengers around the city in the morning, with a specially designed windowed pod, before running a shipment of goods to a local shop in the afternoon by swapping to a sealed cargo-carrying pod.
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The designers say this approach could be the breakthrough which makes autonomous driving technology profitable. rather than fitting the tech to conventional passenger cars, which the firms say spend 95 percent of their time stationary, the Skate can be made to work all the time across a variety of transport sectors, helping to quickly offset the cost of development.
To dive deeper into this productivity well, Citroen and its partners also designed a series of mobile services that use the Skate as a base. These will help keep the platforms occupied and generate more income. One such idea is a fitness pod which allows the occupants to exercise as they’re transported around the city.