Cars might not yet drive themselves, but they already pick up plenty of our slack. Today’s models are equipped with cameras and sensors that help us parallel park, stay in our lane and brake before we ram into the Prius in front of us. Hell, they even talk to each other now (presumably to complain about how bad we humans are at driving).

The road to fully-autonomous cars might be paved, but there are plenty of lingering questions to answer before we ease our white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. For instance: How will we communicate with our cars now that they’re smart? What happens if our cars make a mistake? Will they really look like a Pixar character? “There are some really challenging human-machine interactions that haven't been totally thought through yet,” says Danny Stillion, a partner at IDEO.

This is ripe territory for designers, who essentially have free creative reign to envision what a future with self-driving cars might look like. In a new speculative project, Stillion and his team have come up with three wild concepts to show the potential of automobility over the next 15 years. Think transparent delivery trucks, roving work stations and personal vehicles that know where you want to go before you do.

The world in which IDEO’s autonomous vehicles live doesn’t exist today. It won’t exist next year or even the year after that. This is a long-term vision, and it's a provocation more than anything. But with a little imagination—and some technological optimism—we may be seeing some form of these concepts on the road sooner than we think. Let’s get to it.

Concept 1: Your Family Car, Gone Smart

Your self-driving car pulls in data from your email, text messages and calendar.

Your car of the future has a proximity sensor. As soon as you’re 200 feet away it begins prepping for your drive, pulling in info from your suite of connected devices. Based on email, calendar and text messages, it knows where you need to go and when you need to be there. Your favorite Spotify radio station is queued up, at your preferred volume. You’re ready to drive...rather, your car is ready to drive.

As you head down the freeway, your car's computer will link up with that of the cars heading in the same direction and fall into a snaking line of tailgating vehicles. This is called platooning, and it means you’ll simultaneously speed up or brake with the cars in front and back of you, which reduces congestion, saves on fuel and cuts down on drive time. “It’s remarkable how much of the road is going unused today,” says Stillion.

Platooning might be uncomfortable at first—like many of the experiences with your smart car, it requires a new form of communication and interaction with the cars around you. To account for this, IDEO built green lights into the back and side of the car, which alert fellow drivers whether or not you’re looking to link up. At night, a rainbow-hued light shines between linked cars acting as a visual cue for drivers around you. “It’s like the third brake light,” says Stillion. “Cars need to visualize their intent.”

Your robo-car will obviously drive itself, which means it’s going to look different. The windows are bigger and there's more space for you to sprawl out. The chairs swivel and and the interactive center console doubles as a table.

Concept 2: Like Amazon, But Better

This is Cody, your transparent, self-driving delivery truck.

Someday delivery trucks will have names. The vehicle above is Cody, and you’ll see its transparent figure regularly around your neighborhood. “It should become a familiar site, almost like a post office drop box,” Stillion explains. Cody is hulking but approachable. With a carbon composite x-frame, it's designed to be strong enough for major hauls. It’s also smart as hell.

In this new world, your packages are tracked in real time, down to the second. No waiting around for a package to show up on your doorstep. This hyper-efficiency is augmented by its artificial intelligence. Cody uses algorithms to find the quickest route, and it can change destinations on demand. Need a package dropped at your office instead of home? No problem, just use the app to let Cody know.

Inside, a vacuum-powered surface sorts and stabilizes packages. A robotic arm arranges each box so yours is already at the front of the pile by the time you get to the vehicle. Just scan your face, grab your package and go.

Vehicles like Cody work in tandem with existing delivery platforms like Amazon and UPS. Robo-trucks, thanks to their fast-thinking, can tackle more complicated routes. This will save on time and fuel, not to mention make driving routes more efficient for human workers.

Concept 3: Your Workday, Re-imagined

WorkOnWheels is a workspace pod that commutes to you.

Telecommuting isn't the future—inverse commuting is. Instead of traveling to an stationary office, your self-driving work space will come to you. These modular, traveling pods are called WorkOnWeels, and they set up shop around the city in locations convenient to the workers who book them.

Today your WOW might be near the ocean—it's brainstorming day and your team needs some visual inspiration. Tomorrow it might park in an empty arena lot. As cities grow denser and offices get smaller, mobile workspaces will alleviate some of that tension while putting untapped city infrastructure to good use.

Each WOW has interactive work surfaces, a retractable hatch and furniture that magnetically locks in. You can add more pods depending on the size of your team and customize them to fit your needs. At the end of the day, the WOWs drive themselves back to the hub where they dock, recharge and reconfigure for the next day’s use.