The thing I find really interesting about the Mercedes is not its current interior, nor the interior that will result out of this endeavour. Rather, it's that Mercedes is one of the first companies to realize that if you take the driving part of auto driving out of the equation, that it fundamentally changes what cars are and how we interact with them. The car becomes a living space - yet another room in our daily lives, instead of a container in which we must sit forward and pay attention to the road. Your ideal is an interior focused on relaxing. It's not much of a stretch to imagine people working in their self-driving cars, creating a space that is not unlike an office (edit: like thenewgreen). Or groups of people hanging around and drinking. In a way, it's a development that is already perfected by RV's. But instead of requiring your DD buddy Jim who drives most of the road trip, he's allowed in on the fun of doing anything else but driving.