Hello all,

I read a few articles from Europe to say that ALC is being offered there for many vehicles as part of Adaptive Cruise. Driving made smarter? We test Mercedes' latest automatic lane change tech | CAR Magazine "It's been available for a while in the US and Canada", apparently. Didn't know that. I am pretty sure my GLS has all the hardware needed for this - does anyone know whether there are plans to make it available on the X167 in the US? I understand that this kind of tech is not everyone's cup of tea and so on and so on, but I use my adaptive cruise everywhere and use auto lane change where possible, so this would be a nice addition.

Thanks!

 

I have a MY23 GLS450 w/the Driver Assistance Package and use Lane Change sometimes. I believe you have to drive over 45 mph for it to be "safe" to operate.

Now that I see you have a MY24 GLS, I think DAP became standard! Give it a try!

 

I use the "lane change on indicator" regularly. What this is talking about is not having to tip the indicator. It will change lanes autonomously if it comes up to a slower car...

 

Active Lane Change
1) Make sure cruise control is turned on and active
2) Make sure all lane line indications turn green
3) Your speed needs to be above 45 mph
4) Let go of the wheel. When it's safe, the car will automatically go into the indicated lane!

At no point should you press the brake because that always disables cruise control!

 

I do not see Automatic Lane Change being offered in the USA on said models, so not sure what this article is talking about. Only Active Lane Change is offered, which is the one that requires you to activate the turn signal. I checked the new C Class, S Class and EQS. They only list Active Lane Change and no mention of Automatic Lange Change as far as I can see. It might be bundled with the Drive Pilot, which is the new Level 3 autonomous driving for stop&go traffic, but that's only legal in Nevada and California for now. The first photo in the article shows the steering wheel with the additional Drive Pilot switches in the upper part of the steering wheel, so that makes me think this needs the Drive Pilot hardware. It includes lidar and a bunch of other sensors that are not standard equipment.

 

Yeah, I was talking about Active and not Automatic. Sorry for the confusion!

 

Thanks both.

I did originally read this in a German article that, however, translated roughly into the same as the wording in that British one, so it might have come from the same (incorrect) press release.

Only one comment - my Active Lane Change only works above 50mph. All the local (4-lane) connector roads are 45mph, so I never get to use it there. Not that that's really necessary...

 

Active Lane Change is more of a gimmick and a "look what I can do" feature! However, it does prepare us for the day when Automatic Lane Change comes to the car since we already know the car can change lanes safely even now!

 

I just ordered a new EQE SUV which I believe does the automatic lane change. My 2022 GLS 450 does indeed have the active lane change assist which requires one to indicate to initiate the action. Just like the parallel parking assistant, it does take some time to build confidence in these features, but once you cautiously get used to them they work great. I've never seen them fail in any way.

 

I'm curious about what hardware is required to make it work. Presumably if Active Lane Change is enabled, then Automatic Lane Change might still only be an OTA upgrade (as described in the articles I've read on this). It would be somewhat unlike MB to give that little nugget out for free, though...

 

Good question. I've had the same question about the new Digital Light setup. My GLS 450 appears to have all the right hardware, but MB doesn't offer the software upgrade to enable it (yet). About all you can do is inquire at a dealer or checkout one of the guys online who do MB coding.

 

My wife's EQE sedan recently got this feature activated via an OTA update and I got to try it last night. When cruising in highway from time to time, it beeps and shows the suggested lane change path in the instrument panel and shortly after, it activates the turn signal and executes the lane change. Most of the times it worked reasonably well but a few times, it kept the car behind a slow-moving car for quite some time even through both left and right lanes were all clear. Also I noticed it often made lane changes with no obvious reason (maybe just to get a kick out of it?).

 

When the Active Lane Change was new to us, I'd do this to show off what the car can do so my wife would know how to use it. She never does...

 

Quick follow up. I just got an EQE 350+ loaner this morning and noticed it has the automatic lane change assist. It has to be enabled in the settings. There are three options. Manual, Manual and Automatic, and Off. Manual is the old style where you have to turn on the indicators before it does the lane change and with Automatic set, you can still initiate a manual lane change. I was on the fast lane, when it suddenly beeped and move me one lane over as it cleared up. Kinda neat. Not sure, though I would leave it on Automatic, but maybe a good feature for all the left lane hoggers.

 

I have automatic lane changing in my S580. I turned it off. Its a cool concept, but in practice I found it annoying. So...you're not missing anything.

 

I have been using the automatic lane change feature in the EQE more over the past weeks and I do like it, to the point that I have left it permanently active. It does a great job when cruising on highways. The only annoying thing is that when using Android Auto (and I assume the same goes for Apply Carplay), since the car seems not to be aware of the navigation, it often prompts to do lane changes when you are on the right lane approaching your exit. Of course, you can always cancel it by holding the steering wheel tight, but it does confuse drivers around you as it turns on the turn signal. I guess it wouldn't be an issue when using the built-in navigation as it will know you are about to exit and will not activate the last second lane changes. Makes me wonder how difficult it would be to make the car aware of the android auto/apple carplay navigation when using them just like the built-in navigation. Would be nice.

As a side note as I frequently use both the GLS and EQE day to day, I have found the automatic driver assist features in the EQE to be far superior to the GLS. My GLS often has some difficulty staying in center of lanes and it occasionally gets too close to the sides, to the point of activating the lane departure warning. Think about it: Obviously the car is monitoring the road and it clearly knows it's getting too close to the side to show the warning, so why not just correcting itself ahead of time before showing the warning?! Doesn't make much sense to me.... Talking about the lane departure warning, in EQE it engages the steering wheel to correct it while I believe GLS uses braking which is not very smooth and I usually drive with the feature inactivated in the GLS while I can live with it in the EQE.

Overall, when driving the GLS with driver assist on, I always feel I still need to keep close attention to the road while in the EQE, I feel a lot more confident leaving the system do most of the job. It's a shame since I doubt there is much hardware difference between the two and I guess it's mostly the software that is more capable in the EQE.

 

Is automatic lame changing part of Lane Keeping Assist, is it part of Route-based Navigation, or is it a stand-alone feature?

 

Its all of the above, part of distronic and lane centering vs LKA. Distronic has to be active. If you don't have a destination entered then it will still see a car in your lane and move you to the left to pass on its own, and then it will move you back right. If you are cruising in the left lane and there is nobody around you, it will move you right. It will never pass a car on the right.

If you have a destination entered it will also move you right in advance of your exit on its own.

Its a cool concept. In practice my issue is it moves me around a lot. I can see down the line that I'm going to have to move left again in a short time so I will stay left if there is nobody behind me wanting to go faster. It will move me right and then move me left and then move me right. It often will also move you right when you can see a car is moving more slowly in the right lane ahead of a car that is slowing you down ahead of you in the left lane, and then you get trapped right...

It just changes lanes more often than I change lanes on my own.

 

The lane keeping assist on my 21 GLE must be initiated by me. As you say, I must have Distronic enabled.
Yours must be different. S580?

I've actually never used route based navigation on anything other than a two-lane highway. I really disliked it because it slowed to The advisory speed several hundred yards before I got to the corner. I'd poke along for a quarter mile going 20 mph slower than I would normally.

 

Do you have the little green steering wheel activated? Thats lane centering. Lane Keep Assist is different, it will kick you back into the lane aggressively if you deviate. I actually always keep LKA off and lane centering on.

Lane centering:



You can turn off the automatic deceleration to the posted speed in the vehicle options. I turn that off too.

If you have the automatic lane change activated it will initiate lane changes on its own when in Distronic with lane centering on, if ALC is off it will only change lanes when you initiate the change, same as the GLS/GLE.

 

I was having trouble with my 21 GLE 53 wandering in its Lane and handing the steering back to me more often than the time required by statute to grasp the wheel.

I just got my 40,000 mile service, mentioned it and turned out to be a chipped front camera.

I could see a smudge on screen and wondered about its accuracy.

They were able to warranty it, and I pick up my car tomorrow.
It used to be very accurate.

 

My apologies- I'm always confusing those assist terms, and my car is away.

I agree with you about the different features, however, our cars' terminologies are somewhat different. In this post I'm going to use the language that appears on my 2021 car's screen, and try to go back and edit my misstatements earlier.

I use Active Steering Assist, (Lane centering) which follows the camera, but won't initiate a lane change unless I prompt it.
It's good at sensing adjacent traffic, warning and waiting for someone to pass, and even accelerating to squirt into a gap.
I think ours are different there. I don't think I have what you call automatic lane change.

I also leave Active Lane Keeping Assist off. I agree iIt's overly intrusive, almost unsafe.
And I don't use speed limit adoption(?) either.

 

And to keep with the terminology the two lane change assists are called Active Lane Change Assist and Automatic Lane Change Assist. The former requires manual triggering via the indicators and the latter has the ability to automatically change lanes w/o the driver indicating. Automatic Lane Change Assist is new for I believe 2024 model year vehicles and onward, Earlier model years have Active Lane Change Assist.

 

I've read some people applying PPF on the camera, mine has tiny chips but I guess it isn't bad enough to affect the LKA. Since you have a brand new camera, it might be worth having a detail or PPF shop do that.

 

Chipped front camera? You mean the one in the grill? That camera isn't used for LKA. That's only for parking (front view of the 360 surround view). LKA uses the stereo camera behind the windshield. It can't be chipped, although the windshield glass can.