The front-to-back symmetry is interesting. It may cause some confusion for other drivers, in some limited circumstances, when they can't tell which way the vehicle is facing.

It appears, based on my study of the footage on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIRW8bfy4kE, that it could possibly switch which side is the front and the back by just changing the color of the lights. With RGB LEDs that would be pretty easy to do. But my question is, when would that be useful?

It would be neat that it could pull into a driveway and then leave in "reverse", but that doesn't seem like it'd come up that often for a robotaxi.

The back wheels look like they can steer. That's useful for parking in tight spaces.

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wmf 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

They can switch sides. They showed a demo of pulling into a parking space then driving straight out.

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jerlam 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I wonder if there are barf bags for the backwards-facing passengers.

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jen20 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

London Taxis have been configured this way since at least the 1950s and people don't seem to have any problem with it?

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shermantanktop 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I routinely had 8+h drives in the rear-facing seat of my family's circa 1970 Plymouth Satellite station wagon growing up. Completely unsafe, and very boring, but I don't recall barfing.

My sister and I would pass the time folding up a piece of paper and each of us got to draw part of a person without seeing what the other had drawn. Sort of like visual madlibs.

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arijun 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Congratulations, you don't have motion sickness. I think that post was referring to those who do.

For those people, rear-facing seats can exacerbate motion sickness. See e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00036...

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worik 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> rear-facing seat of my family's circa 1970 Plymouth Satellite station wagon growing up. Completely unsafe,

I am curious: Unsafe because a " 1970 Plymouth Satellite" or because "rear-facing seat"?

	▲	shermantanktop 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Both, plus absence of seat belts. Rear facing with no head support is a good way to snap your neck if you are wearing a belt, but because we weren’t, we’d probably be flying forward to the windshield. https://www.automobile-catalog.com/img/pictonorzw/plymouth/1... Looking at that picture, I see belts, but I do not recall those belts and suspect they were deeply wedged into the seat and forgotten about.

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cyberax 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Plenty of transit all around the world has backwards-facing seats.

	▲	arijun 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes but usually you know which seats will be rear-facing.