Mercedes becomes the first automaker to sell autonomous cars in the U.S. that don't come with a requirement that drivers watch the road
Mercedes becomes the first automaker to sell autonomous cars in the U.S. that don't come with a requirement that drivers watch the road
Mercedes is the first automaker to sell level 3 autonomous cars to U.S. consumers, after announcing plans to do so last year.
They got an army of thousands of Indians to watch the road for you?
No they just got a few dozens good lawyers instead if the lawsuits costts less than the profits and you get publicity out of it then that's business for ya
don't come with a requirement that drivers watch the road
Seems it's like every other Mercedes then
Hey I'm watching it on my mirrors.
And they managed to do it without us obsessing about their CEO several times a day? I refuse to believe that!
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As of April 11, there were 65 Mercedes autonomous vehicles available for sale in California, Fortune has learned through an open records request submitted to the state’s DMV. One of those has since been sold, which marks the first sale of an autonomous Mercedes in California, according to the DMV. Mercedes would not confirm sales numbers. Select Mercedes dealerships in Nevada are also offering the cars with the new technology, known as “level 3” autonomous driving.
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Drivers can activate Mercedes’s technology, called Drive Pilot, when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on spec ific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control. The technology does not work on roads that haven’t been pre-approved by Mercedes, including on freeways in other states.
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U.S. customers can buy a yearly subscription of Drive Pilot in 2024 EQS sedans and S-Class car models for $2,500.
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Mercedes is also working on developing level 4 capabilities. The automaker’s chief technology officer Markus Schäfer expects that level 4 autonomous technology will be available to consumers by 2030, Automotive News reported.
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Hmm, so only on a very small number of predetermined routes, and at very slow speeds for those roads.
Still impressive, but not as impressive as the headline makes out.
I've seen this headline a few times and the details are laughably bad. The only reason this can be getting any press is because the headline is good clickbait. But 40 mph top speed on approved roads in 2 states only if a car is in front of you in the daytime is entirely useless. I guess it's a good first step maybe? But trying to write headlines like this is big news is sad.
40 mph top speed on approved roads in 2 states only if a car is in front of you in the daytime is entirely useless.
It's specifically designed to navigate traffic congestion, which happens under 30 mph. It can keep up with the lane, deal with lane changes, honk if someone backs into you, let ambulances through, things like that. Not sure why the article presents it as generic driving.
The reason this gets attention is because it's the first level 3 sold to consumers.
The tech is hard, of course it's gonna start out with laughingly limited capabilities. But it's the first step towards more automation.
It's starting in California where there are a meaningful number of high earners who are spending hours per day in 4 lane bumper to bumper traffic.
Having actual autonomy during those hours is still shit. But it's a hell of a lot less shit than the tedium of the high attention requirements of sitting in traffic at a crawl.
Fucking subscription. No.
U.S. customers can buy a yearly subscription of Drive Pilot in 2024 EQS sedans and S-Class car models for $2,500
yeah, fuck that.
I think you can afford that if you own an EQS
Love how companies can decide who has to supervise their car's automated driving and not an actual safety authority. Absolutely nuts.
Who said there was no safety authority involved? I thought it was part of the 4 level system the government decided on for assisted driving.
Paywalled.
Ty!
Paywalled.
On a different subject, why would someone downvote a one-word comment that accurately describes what the content is behind?
There are people who are pathologically contrarian. I’ve had to end a friendship over it—the endless need to say something negative about literally everything that ever happens and an unwillingness to be charitable to others.
Because some of us have fat fingers and accidentally downvote when we scroll on mobile.
One of the things I liked about reddit was that, since it saved downvoted posts, I could go through the list every once in a while and undownvote the accidents.
Can't do that here though, and I sometimes notice posts or comments I've accidentally downvoted.
Anyway, people shouldn't care so much, we don't have a karma system or the like here anyways, so why does it matter?
I have the theory that archive.is, waybackmachine and 12ft.io are no secret anymore, and that just posting "paywalled" comes across as too lazy to copy/paste or (a lot easier) to use this addon to reduce the work to a click. i dont mind, but i can understand why others might see it that way
Musk: Fuuuuuuu
Wonder how this works with car insurance. Os there a future where the driver doesn't need to be insured? Can the vehicle software still be "at fault" and how will the actuaries deal with assessing this new risk.
I believe Mercedes takes responsibility if there is an accident while driving autonomously.
Which is how it should be. The company creating the software takes on the liability of faults with said software.
No. I don't think this is a good solution. Companies will put a price on your life and focus on monetary damage reduction. If you're about to cause more property damage than your life is worth (to Mercedes) they'll be incentivized to crash the car and kill you rather than crash into the expensive structure.
Your car should be you property, you should be liable for the damage it causes. The car should prioritise your life over monetary damage. If there is some software problem causing the cars to crash, you need to be able to sue Mercedes through a class action lawsuit to recover your losses.
Berkshire Hathaway owns Geico the car insurance company. In one of his annual letters Buffett said that autonomous cars are going to be great for humanity and bad for insurance companies.
“If [self-driving cars] prove successful and reduce accidents dramatically, it will be very good for society and very bad for auto insurers.”
Actuaries are by definition bad at assessing new risk. But as data get collected they quickly adjust to it. There are a lot of cars so if driverless cars become even a few percent of cars on the road they will quickly be able to build good actuarial tables.
According to who? Did the NTSB clear this? Are they even allowed to clear this? If this thing fucks up and kills somebody, will the judge let the driver off the hook 'cuz the manufacturer told them everything's cool?
According to who? Did the NTSB clear this?
Yes.
If this thing fucks up and kills somebody, will the judge let the driver off the hook 'cuz the manufacturer told them everything’s cool?
Yes, the judge will let the driver off the hook, because Mercedes told them it will assume the liability instead.
According to that teal light.
You do realize humans kill hundreds of other humans a day in cars, right? Is it possible that autonomous vehicles may actually be safer than a human driver?
Sure. But no system is 100% effective and all of their questions are legit and important to answer. If I got hit by one of these tomorrow I want to know the process for fault, compensation and pathway to improvement are all already done not something my accident is going to landmark.
But that being said, I was a licensing examiner for 2 years and quit because they kept making it easier to pass and I was forced to pass so many people who should not be on the road.
I think this idea is sound, but that doesn't mean there aren't things to address around it.
*at 40mph on a clear straight road on a sunny day in a constant stream of traffic with no unexpected happenings, Ts&Cs apply.
Only on closed courses. The best AI lacks the basic heuristics of a child and you simply can’t account for all possible outcomes.
This is also the company that promises to prioritise the vehicle occupants over pedestrians.
I mean that's exactly what the driver would do, I'm not sure why this is controversial
Yeah, for real, "Someone will 100%, do you want it to be your friends/family/people you know or some absolute random stranger?" Some lemmitors would surely answer "My people, for sure"
The human does it out of self preservation, but the car doesn't need to feel too preserve itself.
By getting the in the car, the passengers should be aware of the risks and that if there is an accident, the car will protect pedestrians over the occupants. The pedestrians had no choice but the passengers have a choice of not getting in the vehicle.
I feel like car manufacturers are going to favour protecting the passengers as a safety feature, and then governments will eventually legislate it to go the other way after a series of high profile deaths of child pedestrians.
Who would buy a car that will sacrifice the passengers in the event of an unavoidable accident? If it's significantly better driver than a human would be then it's safer for pedestrians aswell.
It's not really an issue. 99.9% of the time the passengers will already be safe and the pedestrian is the one at risk. The only time I see this being an issue is if the car is already out of control, but at that point there's little anyone can do.
I mean, what's the situation where a car can't break but has enough control where it HAS to kill a pedestrian in order to save the passengers?
I like to imagine somebody in a call center remotely driving your car.
Fine print will say it’s still your fault though if they crash
On a lever 3 system it's not. If it is then it's level 2.
if it can drive a car why wouldn't it be able to drive a truck?
I'm surprised companies don't just build their own special highway for automated trucking and use people for last mile stuff.
yeah that would be great. Say, you can save on that a little if you put wheel guides on the road since theyre all headed in the same direction, and maybe you can replace the tires with something that fits into that guide pretty well so that you don’t have to replace them as much. Matter of fact, all of these trucks can become electric if they run electricity through the track or above it. This is a revolutionary idea!!
It's called a train, no?
On private roads in Canada, the mining giant Teck is starting to use autonomous transport trucks.
To me this is less frightening for public safety and more for reasons related to climate change, since this kind of industrial expansion will be less contingent on worker availability.
Mind you, the whole push toward driverless vehicles seems insanely redundant as a concept, since driverless tech in the form of high-speed rail has been around for decades in an infinitely more efficient way than could ever be offered by personal vehicles.
They are testing them already. I only have a German article that came out this week https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/technologie/fahrerlose-lkw-man-test-autobahn-100.html
The truck division of Mercedes (Daimler) is already testing the trucks in the US. They plan commercial usage in 2027. MAN is testing in Europe in wants to start commercial usage in 2030.
How is that legal?
Because it's an extremely narrowly defined set of requirements in order to use it. It's "approved freeways with clear markings and moderate to heavy traffic under 40MPH during daytime hours and clear conditions" meaning it will inch forward for you in bumper to bumper traffic provided you're in an approved area and that's it.
that paid for it to be, like everything else that's legal?
On a slightly unrelated note, the Mercedes EQ class are really ugly, both internally and externally.
I think most German cars have had a bad generation.
Mercedes: recent designs have been divisive, sometimes I see one and think they look ok and other times they elicit a yikes. More importantly, Mercedes don't have a single car in their lineup right now that outshines their rivals. Usually there'd be at least one. There is no reason to have a Mercedes right now.
BMW: does it even need to be said? BMW has designs and recognisability that others would kill to have, yet they destroy that design language and pump out absolutely hideous cars. This is not a Chris Bangle moment. People aren't initially reeling at these designs but coming around to them and seeing them as being amazing and ahead of the curve like those of the late 90s and into the 2000s. BMWs are ugly now. I've even seen car reviewers such as Johnny Smith literally censor the grilles in their videos lol.
VW: the drivetrains are still completely fine, but my god the cabin quality has suffered. The penny-pinching is insane. Touch controls galore, with no backlight for night time driving? Two window controls and a touch toggle to switch between controlling the front/rear windows? Are you fucking serious, VW? VW used to be the king of affordable priced car with an interior that was closer to the likes of Audi/BMW/Mercedes/Volvo than it was to Renault/Citroen/Honda/Toyota/etc. but they've thrown that away to save pennies.
Audi: ok their general design still holds up well. But their interior is being cheapened just like VW's. No doubt a decision from the top. Also the e-Tron's camera mirrors are unbelievably shit. The Honda e (fuck you Honda for discontinueing, btw) had a much better implementation. And it was fucking dumb to sell the e-Tron GT for £2k less than its Porsche equivalent. Who would buy an Audi when for £2k more you can buy a Porsche?
Porsche: ok Porsche is still mostly excellent, but the first gen Taycan has a little more screen than I'd like. The 2nd generation Taycan is genuinely an engineering masterpiece, though. It feels like the car has finally had as much love poured into it as they do their 911s. People should watch Engineering Explained's technical overview of it, it's staggering how much they've improved it. But Porsche is somewhat niche anyway, they're not enough to make the overall German car market look better.
The most frustrating one is VW. They're supposed to be the mass-market, default, bread-and-butter European brand. And of all times to fuck up, doing it in a time when people are still forming their opinions on EVs is such a massive fuck up. People will look at the ID.3, then look at the likes of the MG4 or upcoming Renault 5 and think "oh, so VW can't make good EVs", and that will stick to them for a long time. Look at how long people thought Skoda was a crappy brand for! It was only around 2010 when "huhu crappy communist 80s car" meme truly died. Perceptions last and they're choosing to trash theirs to recoup some money lost to dieselgate.
Rant over. I'm pretty fed up with the car market right now. I'm gonna keep my MX-5 until the rust claims it.
German brands right now are engaging in stupid "premium theatre", by which they make their cars seem premium by using stuff like fancy headlights or doors that sound good, but are completely cheaping out on other stuff to an extent that's gotten ridiculous. They're being lazy and just resting on their built-up brand image. And that image will collapse if they don't pull their finger out.
I've been watching a lot of car reviews lately and yeah, I think you're right on all points. I watched a review of the new BMW 7 series and even the air control vents are capacitive sensors refer than little levers and it just seems unnecessary. What was hilarious was that the door release is right by the air vent control, so the review I watched saw the reviewer accidentally open the door when they were trying to control the air vent.
There's way way way too much reliance on touch screens in cars. I'm not even sure if you'd legally be allowed to use them in some countries, I feel like you'd have to pull over to just change the HVAC settings! You'd swear it was designed by someone that's never driven a car. They're decisions that are probably coming right from the top and the actual interior designers are pulling their hair out.
There's also a common theme across manufacturers where settings for features are lost when the car is switched off. So you have to go into the settings and change them back every single time you get into the car.
If I were in the market for a car (specifically electric), I'd probably go for Kia. The ev6 and ev9 look really nice. I've seen a couple of EV9s on the road recently and I was surprised at how much smaller they actually seem than on videos.
Like you though we're going to keep our car (Nissan Quashqai) as long as possible. There's no bullshit and it's practical and comfortable.
Those grills are going to be modder meme material, they are basically ai designed grills anyway. Think cartoonesque, Roger rabbit ultra-exaggerated grills with detail highlighted.
Haha are you me?!
I’ve just got a Landrover Defender 2023 (75th) and was so glad is just had buttons for everything. I had a touch screen but other than navigation no need to touch it. Even optional analog dials instead of digital.
Was looking at the van equivalent of the new mercedes (v-class) but same ipad horror on the inside. Glad some brand are reversing this silly phase.
And was long time BMW driver before that but I quit 5 series before electric and the hideous grills. Such a shame.
It feels like the car has finally had as much love poured into it as they do their 911s. People should watch Engineering Explained’s technical overview of it, it’s staggering how much they’ve improved it.
But Porsche is somewhat niche anyway, they’re not enough to make the overall German car market look better.
I wouldn't mind the dominant VAG-internal top-down trickle moving from Audi->VW to Porsche->VW.
Also for the record Porsches are about as common in Germany as Teslas. More common than Mazda or Mitsubishi. Granted, about 50% of those are Cayennes and Macans so that Bildungsbürger mums can drive Anne-Luisa to the farmer's market.
Look at how long people thought Skoda was a crappy brand for!
Because it was, until the Czech moved from "VW but with less fuss, a proper Slav doesn't need no fancy stuff but a workhorse" to "Eh the Wolfsburg guys are getting too crappy let's get Bohemian". It's all VAG in the end but the brands do have their pride and independence.
Lul, yeah. (And with a dash of subjective beauty standards + stuff like how the design is gonna & then actually does age - like I can tell which good looking new Alfa Romeo will age horribly as a design, and which not ... or like when manufactures keep too many old-gen equipment/parts though new designs, like how Mercedes milked their models in the previous decade.)
And then there are some brands that produced like one good looking model, just to prove they could, but then immediately continue with only ugly ones & refuse to elaborate on the matter.
Most new Mercedes are. Especially from the rear. I can't imagine what they were thinking when designing those.
How is this different from the capabilities of Tesla's FSD, which is considered level 2? It seems like Mercedes just decided they'll take on liability to classify an equivalent level 2 system as level 3.
According to the mercedes website the cars have radar and lidar sensors. FSD has radar only, but apparently decided to move away from them and towards optical only, I'm not sure if they currently have any role in FSD.
That's important because FSD relies on optical sensors only to tell not only where an object is, but that it exists. Based on videos I've seen of FSD, I suspect that if it hasn't ingested the data to recognize, say, a plastic bucket, it won't know that it's not just part of the road (or at best can recognize that the road looks a little weird). If there's a radar or lidar sensor though, those directly measure distance and can have 3-D data about the world without the ability to recognize objects. Which means they can say "hey, there's something there I don't recognize, time to hit the brakes and alert the driver about what to do next".
Of course this still leaves a number of problems, like understanding at a higher level what happened after an accident for example. My guess is there will still be problems.
It's also limited to slow traffic on some roads
"DRIVE PILOT can be activated in heavy traffic jams at a speed of 40 MPH or less on a pre-defined freeway network approved by Mercedes-Benz." https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot#:~:text=DRIVE PILOT can be activated in heavy traffic jams at a speed of 40 MPH or less on a pre-defined freeway network approved by Mercedes-Benz.
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You've inadvertently pointed out how Tesla deliberately skirts the law. Teslas are way more capable than what level 2 describes, but they choose to stay as level 2 so they wouldn't have to take responsibility for their public testing
Yeah it's pretty much an insurance product. They came up with a set of boundary conditions someone would underwrite for their "stay between the lines" tech.
It's not about the sensors, it's about the software. That's the solution.
Please tell me how software will be able to detect objects in low/no-light conditions if they say, have cameras with poor dynamic range and no low-light sensitivity?
Guessing their insurance is privately funded
Had this been BMW I would have assumed it was an onion article.
Why?
Exclusive: Mercedes becomes the first automaker to sell autonomous cars in the U.S. that don’t come with a equirement that drivers watch the road
Rachyl Jones April 19, 2024, 12:05 AM UTC
4–5 minutes
The next time you’re traveling on the interstate and see a fellow driver whose hands are full with everything but the wheel—scrolling TikTok, applying mascara, eating breakfast—don’t panic. It’s all legal in certain states, as long as they’re in a new Mercedes with autonomous driving technology.
The luxury automaker has become the first in the nation to start selling self-driving cars—at least those that afford riders a hands-free experience—to regular consumers. So far, the company has sold at least 65 autonomous vehicles in California, Fortune has learned through an open records request submitted to the state’s DMV. Select Mercedes dealerships in Nevada are also offering the cars with the new technology, known as “level 3” autonomous driving.
Level 3-enabled cars went on sale in December, Mercedes told Fortune. California and Nevada are the only two states where the company can legally sell the technology to consumers. The two state DMVs gave Mercedes approval to begin selling the cars last year—Nevada in January, and California in June. Mercedes announced in September its planned to begin sales, but this is the first news of the cars actually reaching consumers.
Drivers can activate Mercedes’s technology, called Drive Pilot, when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on specific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control. The technology does not work on roads that haven’t been pre-approved by Mercedes, including on freeways in other states.
The sales mark a new echelon of autonomous driving available to the average American. Mercedes is the first automaker selling to customers to achieve level 3 capabilities in the U.S., with Tesla and others still offering technology at level 2—in which cars can perform specific tasks but require constant supervision from a driver. Some drivers, however, ignore those rules and operate the cars as if they are more capable than they are. Some drivers, however, ignore those rules and operate the cars as if they are more capable than they are. One family of a deceased driver has accused Tesla of hyping its assisted driving technology as fully autonomous, allegedly leading to tragic results, while California’s DMV last year accused the company of false advertising over the matter.
Meanwhile, robotaxis from Alphabet’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise operate at level 4, meaning cars drive autonomously in most conditions without human interference. But these companies currently don’t sell vehicles to consumers, and Cruise recently halted its service after California’s DMV suspended its license due to an incident in which a car dragged a pedestrian under its carriage for 20 feet.
U.S. customers can buy a yearly subscription of Drive Pilot in 2024 EQS sedans and S-Class car models for $2,500. Mercedes began selling level 3-enabled cars in its home country of Germany in May 2022. The European packages cost 5,000 to 7,000 euros ($5,300 and $7,500) for a three-year membership.
The cars sport turquoise lights on its rear-view mirrors, headlights, and taillights to let law enforcement and other drivers know when the car is operating autonomously. Drive Pilot is only available on select models that have the built-in hardware, including a sensor at the front of the car and a camera in the rear windshield.
Mercedes is also working on developing level 4 capabilities. The automaker’s chief technology officer Markus Schäfer expects that level 4 autonomous technology will be available to consumers by 2030, Automotive News reported. But the jump to level 4 is considerably more difficult than achieving level 3. While humans are still expected to take control of the car based on the circumstances in level 3, level 4 technology is supposed to offer near-total autonomy. At this level, a driver only needs to take over if the system fails. That means the technology must be able to safely respond to nearly all unexpected situations on the road.
The cars sport turquoise lights on its rear-view mirrors, headlights, and taillights to let law enforcement and other drivers know when the car is operating autonomously.
That's actually a pretty neat solution lol
When Verge tested the EQS in September these turquoise lights weren't road-legal yet. It's been proposed as a standard by the SAE but each jurisdiction will have to approve it individually.
Autonomous my ass. Is a person remote controlling it from a low wage county?
It will be litigated almost immediately. There is no current combination of model and hardware platform that a car could reasonably run that could be called "fully self driving" at any useful speed. This thing sounds like parking assist on steroids maybe, or "stalled traffic assist". They will be sued.
Did you read the article? There are already plenty of conditions for activating the self driving mode.
There's tons of conditions
when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on spec ific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control.
I doubt this is a mistake, they must have really high confidence in the tech as well as with the restrictions, not even Tesla had the balls to announce that you could drive distracted.
Sued for what?
I mean I disagree with most of what the person you're responding to is saying, but they are entering into a new stage of vehicular liability. By telling the driver they don't have to pay attention there is an implied transfer of liability.
It probably says somewhere in the terms of use that Mercedes isn't at fault or that you have to carry some special kind of insurance, and frankly computers have a pretty good shot at being better than your average human driver so they'll hopefully be easier to insure, but nevertheless, people on both sides of every accident for the first few years with this tech will sue. Any chance to squeeze a few milly out of a 100 billion dollar car company.
There is no current combination of model and hardware platform that a car could reasonably run that could be called “fully self driving” at any useful speed.
It's still not flawless and reguires an attentive driver but Tesla FSD Beta V12 is pretty damn impressive. They made a huge leap forward by going from human code to 100% neural nets. I don't think we're too far a way from a true robo-taxi and there's going to be some humble pie served for the LiDAR/radar advocates. I highly recommend everyone to watch some reviews on YouTube if you aren't up to speed with the recent changes they've made.
This is really cool and you're all sad wankers.
Oh it doesn't work in all these conditions.
Well it went from not working at all to a completely self driving car in certain situations. That's great. It's the future. We are living in the future
Yeah I doubt this can drive American roads in any weather condition and not have issues.
Correct, it only works when certain conditions are met.
Drivers can activate Mercedes’s technology, called Drive Pilot, when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on spec ific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control. The technology does not work on roads that haven’t been pre-approved by Mercedes, including on freeways in other states.
Read article
in any weather condition
LOL. Weather is probably the smallest of the problems they have solved.
German car makers have a habit of actually testing all their models in all weather conditions, routinely, around the globe.