Self-driving is obvious. The infrastructure will be in place to allow, if not require, highly automated traffic. Just get in the car and tell it where to go; le

Self-driving is obvious. The infrastructure will be in place to allow, if not require, highly automated traffic. Just get in the car and tell it where to go; leave navigation, congestion issues, etc. to the onboard computer linked to the city traffic network. Which obviously leads to an otherwise not obvious major design factor: round. Once the norm is for the occupying humans to not have much, if any, control in driving, the paramount drivetrain issue will be how to move the vehicle in any suitable direction on very short notice. Replace the "front wheels turn a few degrees" paradigm with zero-turn-radius or any-direction movement, and the vehicle's ideal shape is a circle. Seems obvious to me. What's not obvious to me is how crowdsourcing will come up with such a model. To wit: how does crowdsourcing overcome non-ingrained memetic patterns? ETA: BMW is partnering with crowdsourcing pros Local Motors of Phoenix to run the contest. Local Motors already has a crowdsourced, on-sale car to its credit, the Rally Fighter. Then the outcome of this contest will be amusing, as the Rally Fighter seems the utter opposite of the design pursued here.