I was at pains to be very clear that these systems are driver assist only. I work in the technology so would never trust these kinds of systems to drive the car for me; we simply do not have the technology worked out well enough, nor will we in the near term. Hands on the wheel and pay attention at all times. That is the only way to drive a car no matter what the manufacturer or dealership claims.

As I said above, people should be very careful and pay attention until they understand what the drive assist functions do and do not do, and when and how they fail, which they do. My examples of misreading of speed limit signs and poor handling of cars turning off the road are examples.

I suspect when I bought the car the salesmen at the dealership were confused about the level of the car. I recently ran into one of the sales managers who said that they were getting "true" level three cars this year that can do hands off the wheel driving. That is probably the Drive Pilot you mention. However, it seems that they thought what they sold me was level three too. Would not be surprised if both they and I are confused, there is a lot of misinformation out there.

 

I believe level 3 also has turquoise lights that turn on when level 3 is actively piloting the vehicle.

 

Did you watch the videos posted above? Does your EQS look like those EQS's in the videos? Does your steering wheel have those two huge buttons? Do you even own an EQS?
Your profile says that you own an EQE. Level 3 is only on the EQS and the S Class. NO other vehicle in the WORLD rolls off the production line with this feature so the EQE does NOT have it.
It sounds as though you are not sure, I would have thought that the videos would have clued you in as to whether you do or do not have level 3.

 

Yeah, I'm quite confident ehildum does not have level 3. There have definitely been level 3 cars for sale for many months now, I've struggled to find more then about 5 listings for EQSs with the feature, but I've seen probably 100 S Classes on dealer lots with pictures that clearly have the LIDAR, steering wheel, and window stickers with DA9/P26/27U/503/507/200.

 

You are probably right, I think the salesman was confused at the time - not surprising as I am finding that the dealerships do not understand the EQ series very well. More recently, the sales staff seems to have gotten a lot more training, but the service department is still lagging way behind. When I first bought the car, the service visits where several day affairs where the service department hooked the car up the computer, then waited for the technicians in Germany to tell then what to do overnight. More recently they have been able to perform software updates in only 6 hours, but the techs cannot answer many questions about the cars operation.

On a different note, I can assure people that the auto braking works very well; over the weekend I was cutoff by a van weaving in and out of traffic, he may have misjudged the speed of the car ahead of me, and slammed on the brakes immediately after cutting me off. I hit the brakes as fast as I could, but the car engaged the emergency braking before I could brake, and prevented a serious accident. (It could also have been an attempted insurance scam, not entirely sure.)