Bentley wants to put a holographic butler in their next-gen cars

These days, self-driving cars are becoming more science fact than science fiction. From a team of Indian engineers converting a Nano into a self-driving car to Volvo preparing to roll out large-scale testing of autonomous cars to people doing crazy things around self driving cars, it’s hard not to imagine a near-term reality of stepping into a car that whisks us off to our destination completely on its own.

So if ‘regular’ car companies are doing so much in the autonomous driving space, what about the luxury marques? Take the case of Bentley--most recently they released a photo of what appears to be an effort to add a human face into the self-driving context.

A recent mock-up of a concept shows what looks to be a holographic ‘butler’ floating above a center table within a luxury car cabin of the future. It’s hard to say what exactly the said butler might be capable of doing, but in the self-driving context it could be anything from listening to instructions about the destination, to offering suggestions on luxury dining options.

According to The Mirror, Bentley Director of Design Stefan Sielaff states these types of innovations could be inherent to tomorrow’s cars: "In the future our cars will of course feature yet-to-be-invented connectivity and technologies--perhaps a virtual butler, for example--that enhance the lives of our luxury millennial customers, and I strongly believe that how these technologies are integrated into the cabin will become ever more important," he said.