Baby, you can drive my hotel room?

I have a childhood friend who retired earlier this year. She and her husband then spent 6 months in their new RV, tootling around the country visiting kids, grandkids and friends – and seeing a lot of beautiful sites, national parks, etc.

The latest news? They liked it so much that they’re selling their house, estate-selling all their possessions, and taking off for parts unknown on a permanent basis.

Not for me, but what a great adventure.

I thought of Mary-Anne and Tom when I read about a new mode of travel – a hotel room on wheels; a self-driving hotel room on wheels - that’s supposedly going to “revolutionize the way we travel.”

It’s the Autonomous Travel Suite (ATS).

The idea comes from Steve Lee of Toronto’s Aprilli Design Studio, and won an award for radical innovation from the hospitality industry. Guess they’re trying to one-up Airbnb. Plus they’re hoping to do away with short-hop air travel.

Here’s the big idea:

A hybrid design which combines a hotel room with a self-driving vehicle, the Autonomous Travel Suite (ATS) comes in a range of sizes designed to accommodate solo travelers, couples or families. You can even bring your cat.

Designed to carry travelers on journeys of between six and 10 hours, the ATS is equipped with many of the elements found in a traditional hotel room: a sleeping space (with a memory foam mattress), a work space, a tiny kitchen, a toilet, a sitting shower and an "entertainment zone" for watching movies and gaming.

It is encased by panoramic smart glass windows that dim at the touch of a button. (Source: CNN)

We’re still a way aways from autonomous (self-driving) cars, so this one is even further out, but your home away from home will be app-driven (literally). Travelers will plug in Point A and Point B and you’re on your way.

Lee sees his brainchild as part of chains of Autonomous Hotels that would take care of the necessities like docking, waste removal, and amenities like pools and gyms. Sort of like an RV park, no?

[Lee] believes that as a customized, comfortable and time-efficient form of transport, the ATS will be well-positioned to replace domestic air travel -- eliminating the necessity to wait in line at check in, make multiple transport transfers and lug heavy suitcases around.

I was going to say “baby, you can drive my hotel room,” but in this case, there ain’t no baby. That hotel room is going to drive itself.

It’s an idea, but wouldn’t folks just hop in an autonomous car and have it drive them to a real honest to goodness hotel where they didn’t have to worry about the dimmer on the smart glass windows failing, exposing them like a zoo animal.

But I have to say that both Mary-Anne and Tom’s adventure, and the ATS, put me in mind of a Farmer Al Falfa cartoon which, even in my  childhood, was old timey. (The cartoons were from the 1930s, which from the perspective of the 1950s, seemed impossibly way-back.) In the episode I recall, Farmer Al Falfa – who was a grouchy old coot – got hisself a trailer. As he tootled around cartoonville in his 1930’s version of an RV, he strummed and sang a little ditty:

Takin’ a bath in a trailer
Oh by gum by gee
I sure enjoy it ‘cause the water’s free

What ever would Farmer Al Falfa have made of the ATS? Oh by gum by gee alright.