Western Digital, a global data storage provider, envisions a data-driven society in the year 2049. Autonomous vehicles fill city streets, stitched together in lightning fast webs powered by 7G networks.

Together with agency partners Condé Nast Experiential, The Endless Co. pioneered a self-driving car experience to immerse riders in Western Digital’s imagined future.

We designed a fabricated fiberglass and foam vehicle — when the rider steps into the car, they are surrounded by projected digital displays on every window. From the backseat, the rider watches as the car traverses the streets of a cinematically rendered futuristic city. Additional head’s up displays on the windows include all the car’s modules, navigation menus, and information data.

Western Digital storage technology is present at every turn, as the car shows riders each data transfer necessary to operate the vehicle.

The experience is not quite a joy ride — the car quickly reveals that the rider is controlling a character in a rapidly unfolding narrative. This is the car of an off-duty spy en route to dinner at his sister’s house.

The vehicle prompts the rider with a series of split-second choices. Select a gift for her newborn baby; choose a song; pick an article; play blackjack. They make selections on a large touch screen display, trying to make it safely to family dinner while simultaneously handling a nearby emergency mission.

Our production balanced a series of technical challenges — pre-rendered virtual environments, a custom compositing pipeline, an interactive user interface, spatial audio, and projected visuals — all in a fast-paced narrative game.

In twelve weeks, our visual effects team created a multi-layered virtual environment that allowed seamless interaction without the need for real-time visuals. The technology converged to immerse the rider in both the granular details of the story and the broader data-driven world of 2049.

The project premiered at a Western Digital corporate showcase in December 2019, where representatives from major ride sharing and car manufacturing companies convened to explore the merging of data storage with self-driving cars. The experience will be deployed in Tokyo and eleven other cities worldwide.