ADD0514

An interesting article posted by The Verge (link below) previews MB's next generation Drive Pilot (DP), which will debut with the new 2018 S class.Two things that stood out from the article for me are the autonomy level and the intentional lack of precision of the Drive Pilot system.

The initial ad campaign that introduced the new E300 last summer seemed to tout DP as a true contender for the Autopilot system. Consumer Report magazine shot down the inflated facts and MB backtracked their claims afterwards. The ads were a factor leading me to purchase the E300. I felt MB was disingenuous when they quietly pulled some of their TV and print ads relating to DP technologies. The article spelled out the true autonomous level of the current DP system - Which is quite low!

I always feel that, in adaptive cruise control mode, the car drifts from side to side a bit more than expected. It also has the tendency to hugs the right lane markers on freeways. The Verge mentioned that this behavior was an intentional design in the next generation DP. I hope that this is the case for the E300 as well. I've been having this growing concern that the technologies in the E300 are not fully developed, tested, correctly implemented, and my trust in MB is diminishing as the result.

http://www.theverge.com/ces/2017/1/6...pilot-ces-2017

NOMRW8NG

I saw the title of this thread, "Dive-Pilot", and was thinking that it was going to let the car be used like that Lotus Esprit in the Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me'.

Dashoto

I wonder of the E class will get some kind of software upgrade to the Drive Pilot system. I have been pleased with it's capability on divided, clearly marked, highways. On surface streets the ACC works very well, but DP pulls me all over the road.

But the DP system coming in the new S class has more capability. There is a software upgrade prompt within the Command system. Maybe...

hak1308

A few days ago, I reached out to Mercedes Benz Corporate office in Canada via their customer service portal regarding future updates to the Drive Pilot system, and if there will be Mercedes Me and/or mbrace instroduced in Canada and here was their answer:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate your interest in Mercedes-Benz products.

Please note that there are currently no plans to introduce updates for the Drive Pilot feature. Moreover, Mercedes me and mbrace are not available for the Canadian market.

However, Mercedes-Benz Canada will continue to work on a solution which we feel is best suited to meet the needs of Canadian customers, but cannot provide a specific timeline at the moment.

Melanie
Customer Relations
Mercedes-Benz Canada Inc.
98 Vanderhoof Avenue
Toronto, Ontario M4G 4C9

It doesn't necessarily mean there won't be any tweaks or updates when they do their mid-model refresh 3-4 years down the road, though.

Sunrose305

I think there is going to be a very rapid evolution of these driver-assist/auto-pilot systems over the next five years with them getting dramatically better every year. There is now billions of dollars and many big companies chasing this market. On the downside that may mean a car bought this year or next will become obsolete far more quickly than before this self-driving revolution started in earnest. In this regard Tesla has a strong advantage because they are constantly updating their already-sold cars along with those coming onto the market. And they are also continually learning from them in real-time. Their entire fleet (now nearly 200,000 cars) is a living lab so they can learn faster than any other mfr -- at least for now.

expresspotato

Ugh incredible disappointment. These cars can recieve updates over the air as per the user manual. Why drive buy a car with semi-autonomous features, gorgeous front displays and no software updates. Can you imagine buying an iPhone and being stuck on that iOS instead of gracefully being updated year on year?



Might as well just wait a few years instead of buying an already out of date car.

MBWorld Editor

Figured the front page would be interested too...
https://mbworld.org/articles/mercede...g-tech-at-ces/

kotsumu

Over the air updates kinda works both ways though, they can decide that legislation is not ready to move towards autonomous vehicles, and send an over-the-air update to disable the feature as well. In this scenario, I'd rather have what I originally bought.

ADD0514

One thing for sure though, the E series can't steer around a corner or round-about. It uses torque steer to guide the car and can only deal with mild bends.

Correct me if I'm wrong, please.

Beam

Technically the E Class is able to park the car in a tight spot that requires heavy steering input, so I would assume it could potentially navigate sharper turns as well....

ADD0514

You're right. After a close mishap, I forgot all about this feature. I just tried it out and the car steered itself quite impressively. Thanks.

Mike__S

The brake torque method is for fine control of side wind effects, and possibly minor tracking correction, but I believe the steering rack is also under control of Drive Pilot for mild curves. (as well large angles for parking, as has been noted) The latest electric steering racks (from just about every OEM supplier) are already servo controlled. In this, the Drive Pilot is active up to "x" degrees of restricted steering angle.

This "x" degrees is simply a question of firmware. The reason it is presently restricted is the uncertainty of existing road tracking strategies. We do not want to have large steering inputs at speed that suddenly the driver needs to correct. Many drivers would fail when surprised with this task. The system is restricted to "beep, you take over!" as a result.

There is quite a bit of external system work (Meta-Data infrastructure, which see) not directly related to the on-board "Drive Pilot" system that has to be done before steering racks will receive full, automated control at significant road speeds.

ADD0514

You're quite right. The E300 has no issue with steering in auto-parking mode and gentle bends on freeway. Complex environments seem to befuddle the system and it starts to drift over the lane markers. I guess that's why Tesla crowd source the meta-data and force the customers to be beta-testers with no opt-out option.

Beam

Is there a beep though? I found sometime on the highway, when in a bend, the lane keeping assist looses the lane markings and the only indication is the little steering wheel icon changes from green to white and the car starts drifting out of the lane.... a beep would actually be appropriate in those situations I think....

jgs1564

ADD0514:

Well-said....I couldn't have said it better myself. I have a 2017 E300 with P3 package. I very seldom use the Drive Pilot, as it does not instill a sense of confidence when driving with it on. I too have experienced that my car will tend to gently "ping-pong" in the lane it's in, and on even moderately sharp curves, it will veer completely out of the lane.

ADD0514

There's no beep. The car just starts to drift. OTOH, my other car will beep for any incursion into an adjacent lane and there's no option to cut the volume. It gets to my nerve some times.

Proeliator2001

I don't think merc did themselves any favours with their advertising of the system. People seem to think you can climb in the back for a sleep. The steering is an assist only, it's not designed or capable to be left alone for any length of time. Hence when it loses lane tracking it does so without any announcement. If it made a bong human nature dictates you'd use it to self steer without your attention or input till you heard a bong. By the time your focus was back on the task, you'd appraised the issue and started to take control it's likely you're local funeral home was already picking out a suit for you.

Sunrose305

Frankly I would not be buying this car if it were not for the Drive Pilot option. And I agree it sounds like they oversold it. Here's one of the ads they still running (I just was served it in Facebook)...
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/AEfa/2017-me...***-the-future

Mercedes will be running a TV commercial during the Superbowl next month. It will be interesting to see what they choose to show. Those spots cost over $5 million each so it will likely be an E-Class commercial since that is their big moneymaker.

Sunrose305

Here is the infamous print ad that MB was pressured to stop running.

Mike__S

I think we need to separate the wheat from the chaff here.

Autonomous driving is a ways away yet. The vehicle systems mechanically can drive the car, that is not really the question anymore. The problem is getting the right kind of information to this mechanical system. This is the part that still requires a lot of infrastructure work, not just on Mercedes part, but industry wide, and in conjunction with governmental organizations from the legal and legislative areas down to the state, county, and municipal maintenance standards.

Drive Pilot's steering at speed part is the most ambitious part of the Driver Assistance concept. It is still under development and when you buy into the P3 package, one must simply face this fact. However, there is a second aspect to the Driver Assistance package that is very much ready and working.

This second aspect are the safety or accident mitigation features. This part is quite advanced and I think many people are not quite aware of the extent of these features, nor how important they already are.

The biggest achievement is high differential speed decision making capability of the safety systems. The emergency braking feature is able to function up to something on the order of a 80 mph speed difference. (I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment) The point is if a vehicle is going slow, or abruptly slows down or turns into your path, the current system quickly sounds warning and immediately after will brake with maximum deceleration if you hit the brake pedal.

In many cases an accident will be avoided. If not avoided, recall that energy of impact goes up by the square of the speed. Thus, even a 20 or 30 percent reduction in speed is a significant reduction in the energy of a crash, greatly enhancing survivability of not total injury prevention.

In these situations, the Mercedes E300 system will also look for and tug the wheel towards a safe path. People like my wife will probably just freeze in such a situation and a tug on the wheel may be just enough to get her decision process back under way. As Sterling Moss once wrote, 'I am perfect willing to lose control of the car to avoid an immoveable object and worry about collecting control back up later!' A second point is the old racer's adage for a spin out in front of you. "Aim right at 'em, 'cuze they won't be there when you get there." Only, with modern safety features, cars now do much to prevent total loss of control.

Now, it is not going to save you unless you are prepared to save yourself. Like the "eject! eject!" warning in a fighter jet, it will get you out if you react fast enough. But, you have to react. If you don't react you could be very dead anyway, as the braking system will take a bit (using up distance to target) longer before taking over heavy braking, due to driver inaction.

The secondary aspects, such as monitoring side street and pedestrian threats, as well as rear cross traffic are also significant safety features that are as fully functional as the law of physics allow.

With this brief description, I hope to have pointed out that autonomous steering is only a small part of the overall picture and despite its novelty appeal, there are several other important, fully functional features that constitute the pure safety aspects of the Package 3 Driver Assist suite.

They are not a total waste of your money. What is a waste of money is the callous way in which Mercedes USA has packaged these features with a roughly $4500 take or leave it premium by bundling Drive Pilot with a huge number of non-essential options at a price of some $10,000.

Dashoto

Thank you, Mike. That was a very informative and enlightening read.

Sunrose305

Looks like a dramatically improved version of Drive Pilot will appear later this year in the 2018 S-Class:

http://blog.caranddriver.com/heres-j...omous-driving/

ADD0514

Sadly, I don't think any of those improved capabilities will trickle down to the E class.

Sunrose305

My guess is we will see it offered on the 2019 model E-Class which should hit the showrooms in about 17 months.

ADD0514

This video describes the upgraded Drive-Pilot installed in an E300 test mule. I also read other articles about the S class autonomous driving capabilities, there are a couple details that are pretty murky.

• Are the current hardware sufficient?
• A firmware and Here map update will be required. Does MB want to deal with updating existing E300? Or just roll out the new system on new model year models? The 2nd option means more profits for MB.