Why does everyone move? The only thing that is clear is that fidgety modern man cannot sit still. Unless you strap it down with a seat belt in the car. The furniture is to become the third living space with a cinema and bookshelf in the middle of the street. That’s why autonomous driving is considered the next big thing. Even the driver should read instead of staring at the avalanche of cars.
At least in terms of traffic, the conditions seem good: Germans spend an average of around 40 hours a year in traffic jams. In Munich the loss of time is twice as great, in London, Paris and Brussels it is more than 140 hours per year – that’s more than six full days. Enough time to catch up on reading the classics.
Now the reading marathon starts at Mercedes: The Drive Pilot costs 5950 euros gross for the S-Class. With the electric model EQS (here is a test report), including the driving assistance package Plus, it is 8842 euros. “For customers, this means an ultimate driving experience. They can relax or work and thus win back valuable time,” promises the manufacturer. The driving robot (level 3) is available in advance for test rounds in the traffic jam capital of Berlin, where traffic is reliably blocked even during the day. The conclusion in advance: It won’t happen that quickly with the relaxed browsing driver.
Keep your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road: in highly automated mode, the driver can focus on certain secondary activities.
(Photo: Mercedes)
The starting point is Dovestrasse in Berlin, not too far from the Brandenburg Gate – and the infamous A100/A101. The speed limit on the city motorway is 100 km/h, but most of the time we move at walking pace. “And again tens of thousands are stuck in traffic jams. Berlin simply can’t do commuter traffic,” he says Berlin courier grammatically a bit shaky. Early in the morning, the traffic information center tweets one traffic jam after another, access roads are often closed due to excessive traffic. Elsewhere, too, the traffic arteries are on the brink of collapse, such as the Périphérique in Paris or the London Orbital (M25). Technology help!
“I look forward to every traffic jam,” says Gregor Kugelmann, project manager for the Mercedes Drive Pilot. Which is just as misleading as the built-in chauffeur’s name. Like Tesla’s autopilot, the Drive Pilot promises a service similar to flying: get in, take off, the computer does the rest. It’s not quite as heavenly on the streets of the capital. Even if the car – in contrast to all other road users – has hard-coded the rules. “In heavy traffic or traffic jams on suitable stretches of motorway in Germany, the driver can hand over the driving task to the system under certain conditions at speeds of up to 60 km/h.” Oh ha, the chauffeur service is not intended for urban federal roads.
“The Munich ring road has a lot of traffic jams and the lanes are also structurally separated, but it’s still just a federal highway with intersections and traffic lights,” explains Gregor Kugelmann. According to the law, the Drive Pilot may not be used there. Unlike on the Berliner Ring, where traffic doesn’t flow any faster. Patience is required during the test drive until the activation buttons on the steering wheel light up. The computer first has to warm up in traffic, and the current shouldn’t be too fast. The red handover warning immediately lights up because the car in front disappears into the next lane at full speed and the gap is getting too big.
With the “eyes” of a machine: the cockpit shows a vehicle ahead.
(Photo: Mercedes)
Oops, another interruption, the stereo camera has discovered a construction site sign. The Drive Pilot doesn’t like swerving lanes with yellow lane markings at all. The machine sounds an alarm if it loses sight of the white lane marker. Or when a breakdown vehicle breaks down directly ahead. Because the souped-up S-Class is trapped in its control system, it cannot overtake itself. Each time, the red warning light forces the driver out of his permitted secondary activity. He also has to take responsibility as soon as possible in front of tunnels or curves that are too tight. After all, who wants to read in tunnels or tight corners?
Car drives, driver reads? The Mercedes Drive Pilot constantly demands attention
Alarm here, alarm there, the A100/A101 has plenty of distractions to offer. Luckily the sun is shining over Berlin, otherwise the drive pilot would not have even started work. It was raining a few months ago when we first met at the Mercedes test site in Immendingen. Despite an elaborately staged artificial traffic jam with a dozen vehicles, the system could not be activated. Even in snow, fog and darkness, the fair-weather pilot quits duty. The low sun in the morning or evening should also irritate the autonomous car. Average adaptive cruise control isn’t as smart, but is much more commonly available.
No less strenuous is the regulation that motorists in motorway traffic jams at less than 40 km/h have to form an emergency lane. Exemplary, the S-Class constantly hangs on the left or right edge of the road on the three-lane route. Which annoys the 40-ton truck diagonally behind it and encourages it to honk. Doesn’t the good man know that the future is on its way here? The luxury sedan seems too inconspicuous for that. There are neither Martian antennas nor special signal systems stuck to the roof, and the attention-grabbing camouflage film with lots of little stars is also missing. Only in the streamlined EQS does the lidar sensor stand out from the sloping front like a kind of monocle. This is where aerodynamics and autonomous driving visibly get in each other’s way.
The Mercedes EQS with sensors in the front. The two measuring devices act like a monocle.
(Photo: Mercedes)
Shortly before the end of the test drive, a Sanka with a tattoo mingled with the slow-moving traffic and rang the warning bell: Take over, immediately! Luckily, the test driver didn’t even try to pick up a book. The vision of reading behind the wheel, taking part in a video conference or just making a concentrated phone call – bursts in the capital city chaos. “Drive Pilot also reacts to unexpected traffic situations and manages them independently, for example by evasive maneuvers within the lane or by braking manoeuvres,” according to the official version. This probably refers to the slalom motorbikes that cut in barely a meter in front of the Mercedes. Which, of course, encourages the drive pilot to make sudden emergency stops.
When a system error then suddenly prompts the driver to take over, the no longer relaxed test driver, who is also supposed to look at colorful pictures on the central monitor, has had enough of the supposed autonomy. Car drives, driver reads? There is still a long way to go before the breakthrough innovation. In the driving school for new assistants, everything remains the same for the time being. As usual, the customers act as test dummies until the system is really ready for large-scale production.
Everything already experienced: emergency brake assistants who prefer to step on the iron once too much than once too little. Hallucinating on-board computers that regularly gallop even when the speed limits are displayed. Navigation devices that assume the car is in the undeveloped outback or ruthless lane departure warning systems that acknowledge every sniffing over the edge of the road with jerky braking. All for the sake of progress. Experienced motorists take it with equanimity or switch off the systems.
The Drive Pilot may be checked, simulated and safe a thousand times; for the time being, it is above all a declaration of intent: the test subjects should please continue to run test kilometers and transmit data to the cloud until the system really works comfortably. Why not? At Tesla, people are scrambling to test green (technology) bananas for a lot of money. If you like reading books, it’s better to stay at home.