WEBSRFR

Interesting article comparing the self driving capabilities of Mercedes, BMW, Infinity and Tesla in a somewhat scientific way where they had the cars handle driving on their own under similar circumstances.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features...finiti-feature

The big takeaway is that hopefully sooner rather than later Mercedes needs to be able to fully update the software in their cars. Imagine if all 2014+ S Class vehicles can receive a software update with Mercedes' latest autonomous driving software...

e_dasani

Obviously it would be super sweet for S-class to get as techy as the Tesla is. But considering its a luxury vehicle (and not an electric car), so I wouldn't hold my breath to it. MB's focus seems to be on the luxury segment (alongside Bentley and Rolls) instead of technology segment where its no doubt that Tesla has proven its reign. Nice article though, thanks for sharing.

WSH

Well-engineered driver assist stuff may be useful in catastrophic situations

But in much routine driving natural human IQ of risk-profiling fellow drivers in surroundings (whether 25MPH urban stop&go or 65MPH cruise in dense urban rush hr) is vastly superior in active/passive safety than any software

Reality is 99++% of software engineers anywhere don't understand tail risks: which are only bets/judgments possible by smart human drivers real-time as they judge surroundings.....and suspect those with superior such judgment can easily afford to drive some new 65 and prefer such software to be a reliable assist in emergent split-second situations...but otherwise prefer to drive self

If car mfrs can't even solve such basic issues as safe/reliable airbag systems (or gearboxes, like MCT/DCT), have limited confidence in any autonomous driving tech nr term

WEBSRFR

Your mindset that autonomous driving is too complicated is about to be eclipsed by technology. Even current technology allows for autonomous driving for 90-95% of highway driving that is far safer than when a human is driving the car, corner cases included. The software is only getting better and hence the need for these systems to be able to be updated over the air. We are at most 3-5 years away from fully autonomous driving.

As for gearbox reliability, don't worry about that as modern cars won't have a gearbox We certainly don't miss having a gearbox in one of our cars!

Autonomous is the most useful in monotonous highway driving where nothing much goes on and this is when the human brain basically gets bored and tired after a few hours whereas software will always be alert and on the job. For highway driving I love this feature as it is like having a second driver/set of eyes completely alert and scanning the surrounding 360 every fraction of a second. It greatly eases the workload for hours of driving. In a situation where someone else may infringe on your lane and about to cause an accident, the system can intervene with braking and even steering in a split second.

Here's an impressive time lapse of Tesla Autopilot driving a car from Boston to Orlando. The driver was asked to hold the steering wheel at times but the car managed the driving without any intervention for many miles at a time. Over 90% of the trip was driven by the Autopilot software. The Tesla autopilot system is now safely driving over 1.5 million miles a day all over the world.

On the video you will see the car while in autonomous driving mode actually route the car around bad traffic automatically. This is the future where you program your destination, sit back and enjoy the drive. Of course you can take command and have fun whenever you want to but it eases the strain in driving for many hours at a time.

AppleFan1

+1. I agree with you about autonomous driving and safety 100%.