dingmah

Apparently the new 2017 E Class is going to have tons of new tech & features that even our S Classes don't have.
http://www.autoblog.com/2015/07/07/2...feature-video/

New tech toys the 2017 E Class is going to have that the current S Class won't have, until probably the 2018 facelift.

• Park by Smartphone - cool tech that keeps up with what BMW introduced on their 7.
• Lock by Smartphone - really useless, and is a total step backwards from Keyless Go. Why would you ever want to take out your smartphone and tap your door handle with it?
• Vehicle to X system - not much use until other manufacturers and more Mercedes models have it.
• Evasive steering - I would like to have this on my S.
• Speed Limit Pilot function - This is the probably the one feature that I would want most to see on our W222s.
• Improved Distronic Plus with steering assist - car steers based on the car in front, and doesn't rely on the road markings. This should have been on our W222s already.
• Pre-Safe Impulse Side - I would like to have this on my S.
• Pre-Safe sound - I can do without this one.

I really dislike Mercedes at times. If you're going to debut new technology and features, it should be introduced on the S Class, then trickle down to other models. The worst part of it all is that these tech toys & features have been in the works for a while now, and surely could have been incorporated into the W222. But alas, Mercedes is good at marketing and always creating a "newer version" of your current car that wish you had waited a bit longer to get.

So much for our W222s being the best Mercedes in 6 months time

newyorktoLA

1. Probably won't be legal in North America anyways.
2. Exactly - I rather just put my hand on the door handle than my smart phone :roll eyes:
3. Who cares
4. Evasive steering is mehhhh
5. Won't be legal in America plus who drives exactly at the speed limit?
6. Who cares - Distronic Plus with Stop/Go Pilot is good enough as it is.
7. Ok, interesting
8. What the heck is that

All in all, I think the biggest features we missed out on are the 9G-Tronic and the Multibeam headlamps already on the CLS. Other than that, I feel like the S class is reaching a point where new technology just isn't that impressive anymore. Most of the technology on our cars (Distronic Plus, Blind Spot Assist, Lane Keeping Assist, massage, etc) were mostly available on the W221 anyways

UrBusted

I wouldn't be surprised. Our S Class' were revealed in 2013 and this E Class is planned to be unveiled in 2016. If we just be patient, I can bet we will have a lot more technology coming in the facelift, which I expect to be released 1 year after the convertible.

Corey140

Streamliner will be happy that MB will finally have a cross traffic with active emergency braking like Chevrolet.

Diesel Benz

1. could be useful somewhere in Europe where we have very little space, cannot think of it being useful in the US.

2. I would assume this being the same thing that is currently offered on the S-class in Europe, not sure if it is already supported in the US. Not replacing KG but an option to remotely (from anywhere) lock and unlock the car via the app on a phone.

3. indeed could be useful when widely deployed.

4. no opinion

5. At the miss-rate of the speed limit assist today, I would not want to use the pilot. Hopefully an option to turn it on and off. Even the maps database has incorrect speed limit information in many cases (cannot avoid it when MB is picking up the oldest possible database that maps vendors offer).

6. The W222 Distronic Plus already follows the car in front, but only at slow speeds. Perhaps the point here is to enable this for higher speeds?

7. any safety feature must be good but might be a rare case for this as Distronic Plus already has cross-traffic detection.

8. too late for my ears.

Quadcammer

honestly, how much technology do you really need? The S-class is already so technologically advanced that most of the features go unused.

Not to mention you get a bigger, more luxurious, and better riding vehicle.

BenzV12

That's inevitable , I see your being grunt and huffy in terms of lack of cool gadgetry and a downscale model has it all .
Don't forget, you still have W222 , or S Class, The Mercedes-Benz of The Mercedes-Benz
Today, entry model that's called W176 A Class has more gadgets then that of W221 and there is not decades between these cars .
I would whine if next gen W213 E Class would beat W222 in terms of riding comfort

cookstar

The remote parking is gimmicky at best and offers little to no real world usage. From the video the way I understand is that you have to :

A) get out of the car
B) open the app
3) do the circle motion and wait till the car is finished

This defeats the whole purpose of "autonomous" driving/parking. Its a good first step but as I said gimmicky, sort of like the auto parallel park I have in my GL, I have used it once and that was to show it to my 75 year old grandfather lmao.

I also have distronic plus and hope they make significant changes to it in term of how it operates vs fuel economy. Right now the way the car accelerates is not fuel efficient to say the least and the braking is jittery at best, even with the knob turned to maximum distance from the car ahead it offers terrible jittery panicky braking, sort of like your day dreaming and than realize you have a car stopped ahead.

All in all for the people that are pissed that the E or even C class has some technology that the S class does not have, you have to understand that manufacturers make plans for a mid cycle refresh or new model years before it actually hits the road. The W222 that came out in 2014 was probably designed minimum 2-3 years before it hit the road...

If you want up to date tech you have to get the Tesla Model S. It is the only vehicle as far as I know that has significant updates over the air, and by significant I really mean usable day to day technology.

SHHKNewport

Even if '17 E class has more tech toys, its still not a S class. The Sonderklasse really is special. Personally I didn't get it because of its technology. To me its like the gold Rolex of cars...and I'm not switching Rolex out for an Apple watch.

Bocahoo

I assume this could be done remotely... like if you walked into a store, or restaurant, or work and can't remember if you locked the doors, you could open up your smartphone and lock the car with an app. I can't imagine it is intended to be used INSTEAD of the keyless go.

PeterUbers

Lol

You guys make me laugh

Some of you talk as if the e class is a Chevy cobalt

some e classes cost about $140k fully optioned

yamanote

This is already possible with the Mbrace app though. Lock by smartphone seems to be more of a 'because we can' thing, and not really something that's a necessity.

Diesel Benz

In other words:
https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mer...ion-cls-video/

https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mer...nect-me-works/

Bocahoo

Doesn't Mbrace require a paid subscription?

yamanote

Rereading the description of 'lock by smartphone', it looks like an NFC-equipped phone can now be used to replace the key altogether, whereas Mbrace just allows you to remotely lock and unlock your car. Two different features- Mbrace would be the app you want in the forgot-if-I-locked-the-car scenario you mentioned.

The 2016 DOG for the W222 mentions NFC as a new addition, but without any description of its functionality. Perhaps this will already be in the 2016 S. It's not as useless as I thought it was initially, especially since it's possible to start the car with the (docked) phone as well.

Corey140

New plans are coming with Mbrace in a few weeks.

Supposedly, 5 years of service will be included with all 2016 purchases...

Wolfman

Long overdue.

This will save $280 a year unless they strip non-emergency features out of it to offer them in the "optional" Mbrace Plus service.

AppleFan1

Will the new MBrace improve on the horrible Wi-Fi internet speed? I sure hope so because it's basically useless the way it's been.

Wolfman

No. Mbrace is a set of services.

yamanote

My understanding is that as of right now, everything needs to be run through a server in Germany to verify your account is permitted to access the services, which is why everything is so slow. Once an Mbrace server in the US is set up, speeds should improve.

Wolfman

Not the case. Also, who cares? You realize the Internet is global, right? Traffic to Germany is as fast as in the U.S. (Even if there are a few more hops through some routers). Thank Verizon or MB

yamanote

Is there information that suggests something has changed since last year?

https://mbworld.org/forums/new-s-cla...ml#post6142731

DaveVY

Saying that traffic to Germany is as fast as in the U.S. even with more hops is painting the situation with a very very broad brush.

There are many factors in the perceived speed. Basic Internet speed tests available on sites such as speedtest.net look at three factors: latency (ping), upload speed and download speed. The number of hops and where those hops occur will have a dramatic impact on the perceived speeds. Since I know you like data to substantiate any different opinion than your opinion I just ran a quick test. Ping to the nearest server to me in Florida is around 36ms. Ping to Frankfurt just reported as 155ms. The Frankfurt ping took 4.3 times longer than a local ping. If I ping a server in Virginia it is 41ms. There are significant differences in speed based on the number of hops and also the proximity to major internet hubs. You might say that we are just splitting ms here and that this is not noticeable but this ping is the equivalent of how long it takes to get someone's attention to say something or ask something. If you have to wait for this length of time hundreds of times in the course of a short discussion (eg- a MBrace app request) then the impact will be more than very noticeable.

This delay issue is very real. Financial trading firms want to shave every single ms off. Even consumer companies are dramatically impacted. This type of latency issue is part of the whole time delay/buffering issue that Netflix was having. Netflix found solutions to the latency by dropping the number of hops to the local internet providers (and in many cases having a direct connection from Netfix to the provider) but the internet providers wanted to be paid extra for allowing the direct connections.

I work for one of the largest carrier neutral data center providers in the world, latency/ping is an issue on the minds of every major company that relies on the internet.

This is just scratching the surface of how just the simple ping test shows the need for MB to have a server in every major region where MBrace is offered.

Wolfman

To compare financial traffic to general Internet traffic is a stretch to say the very least. Of course international is a bit slower, but that is in milliseconds and has no impact on the general websurfing experience. Financial firms also use dedicated data connections for predictable latency and performance.

Most people that surf never know where the websites they visit are actually located. Many are outside the U.S.

MB's Mbrace performance is probably on par with an ancient 9600 baud modem (remember those?).
We assume that Verizon offers data speeds to Mbrace at the theoretical limit of 3G but we don't know what Mercedes has actually contracted with them. The May have simply contracted a low priority, low bandwidth service.

It was suggested that the traffic is going through Germany (in itself no big deal), but that all internet traffic is going through a VPN connection. That would be a very big deal but somewhat Impossible to imagine that MB take on all that traffic through its own firewalls and servers only to authenticate eligibility.

That could explain the slow speed but would be idiotic to do since it's easy to authenticate through a VPN without routing the Internet traffic itself through it's servers.

Jason B

Is this also because Mercedes uses 3g and not LTE/4G?