The steering wheel retracts as if by magic, the driver’s seat slides into a comfortable position, and the car keeps on driving by itself.

With its fully electric show car, the Audi Grandsphere Concept, the premium carmaker showcased at the IAA Mobility in Munich how the interior of the vehicle will change in the future as the driver becomes a passenger when driving functions become increasingly automated.

The private jet for the road, the 5.35 m (17.6 ft) long Grandsphere sedan combines the luxury of private travel in the greatest of comfort with a comprehensive onboard experience offering.

“After e-mobility, the next and significantly more radical change will be the shift to smarter and, ultimately, autonomous vehicles,” says Markus Duesmann, CEO of Audi AG. “For us, automated driving is a key technology with the potential to make traffic safer and mobility more comfortable and inclusive.”

With the Audi Grandsphere Concept, the carmaker showed how fully automated driving enables new levels of freedom. In Level 4 mode, the interior turns into a spacious sphere of experience without a steering wheel, pedals, or displays. As well as taking over the task of driving wherever possible, the vehicle offers everyone on board a wide range of options for taking advantage of this freedom for relaxation, work, or entertainment. Audi is working with Cariad, the Volkswagen Group’s software think tank, toward introducing the technology in the second half of the decade.

The all-electric concept car features numerous technologies that will be found in future Audi production models within a few years. As a result, the interior transforms into a spacious lounge with an unobstructed view and access to all the features of the holistic digital ecosystem that the Audi Grandsphere is integrated into.

As the second of three “sphere” concept cars from the brand, the Audi Grandsphere has a special place. That is because the technologies and design features assembled in it will turn up again within a few years in future Audi series.

The electrically driven roadster Audi Skysphere concept debuted in August 2021 – it was a spectacular vision of an automatically driving GT that transforms into a self-driving sports car with a variable wheelbase.