"Could car design disappear, like design has disappeared on phones?" As a rhetorical question for a car designer to ask, it's a bit of an existential one. Especially a designer who's designed one of the very things he fears might be responsible for the death blow: an autonomous electric pod-lounge. This is Samuel Chuffart, head of design at Icona. We'll come to them in a moment.

"Could car design disappear, like design has disappeared on phones?" As a rhetorical question for a car designer to ask, it's a bit of an existential one. Especially a designer who's designed one of the very things he fears might be responsible for the death blow: an autonomous electric pod-lounge. This is Samuel Chuffart, head of design at Icona. We'll come to them in a moment.

Cars have become icons of style, mobility and luxury. Design teams around the globe are creating concept vehicles for the future that will drive themselves. Icona started in 2010 in Italy and has now has grown to a global design company with 180 employees and studios, in Turin, Italy, Shanghai, China and Santa Margarita, California. Auto Futures talked to Icona's Global Design Director, Samuel Chuffart, at AutoMobility LA ahead of the North American debut of the Icona Nucleus. "In the future of cars we have to reset our values and adapt to the needs of new technology such as Level 5 autonomous driving," says Chuffart who sees autonomous cars as s more like a private yacht on wheels and draws inspiration for the Concorde airplane.