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Jaguar’s Autonomous Car Has Eyes! All The Better To Freak You Out With!

Jaguar’s Autonomous Car Has Eyes! All The Better To Freak You Out With!

Self-driving cars are all the rage. It seems like everyone and their brother are trying to get in on the action. It’s not just the tech companies, either. Sure Google, Tesla, and Apple dominate the headlines, but the big automobile companies are getting in on the act too. Although, maybe they shouldn’t be. For example, Jaguar has built an autonomous “pod” that has been nicknamed the “EyePod” (we have a feeling Apple won’t be happy with that). Here’s the thing — the pod has EYES. And those eyes are SUPER creepy.


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It’s a small “car” of sorts, clearly made for minimal passengers and in the video, it appears to work pretty well. The car comes to stop at a crosswalk to allow a woman to pass. There are obviously a couple of cameras that follow the woman as she crosses and then it continues on.

Here’s the thing, the cameras have been made to look like eyes. What would normally just be modern tech interacting with the world at large has been transformed into a lecherous creepy car staring at a woman the way construction workers on a coffee break might. It got us wondering if instead of honking, it whistles and yells misogynist catcalls.



Surely Jaguar thought they were building something cute. “Oh look, a cute little transporter, let’s give it a personality, we’ll make it like an adorable little robot.”

Swing and a miss! It reminds us more of Marvin, the depressed robot from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy than it does a cute fun car. Leave that to the VW Beetle people, please.


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We all have high hopes for the future of autonomous transportation, but eyes that follow people around on the street are just too weird. Below is the full video, if you’d like to see how it works and how it looks in a testing environment, complete with stalker stare.