| USA TODAY | - |
ALAMEDA,
Calif. - Sitting inside the Mercedes-Benz F015 Luxury in Motion
self-driving car, the future is now. Four of us face each other as the
silver-skinned concept vehicle charts a pre-programmed zig-zagging
course along an abandoned runway just ...
Marco della Cava, USA TODAY Four of us face each other as the silver-skinned concept vehicle charts a pre-programmed zig-zagging course along an abandoned runway just across the bay from San Francisco.
The steering wheel is now at the driver's back. One passenger touches a button and a small coffee table levitates from the floor. Another taps a touch-screen door panel and commands the vehicle to drive in a more spirited fashion.
For 15 minutes, we talk, check our smartphones, listen to music and generally forget about the world outside. And that's the point, Mercedes engineers say. The automobile soon will cease to become just a car, and turn into a living space.
"It will become the third place you will spend time, after your office and your home," says Holger Hutzenlaub, a member of the company's Advanced Design team. "In the future, when cities will be bigger and the chaos greater, the greatest luxury goods will be privacy and time."
Hutzenlaub is part of a large Mercedes team that has set up shop at the decommissioned Navy base here for the coming weeks. The automaker is inviting selected journalists to experience a ride in the F015, a four-year project that proved the show-stopping gadget from January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
A growing number of tech companies and automakers, from Uber to Audi, seem intent on making the self-driving car a reality. Many experts agree the tech side of the equation is almost baked, though regulatory issues and consumer acceptance still need solving. In fact, Elon Musk recently called the autonomous car a "solved problem" at a conference, and later drew some fire from suggesting that humans would one day be banned from driving.
What's notable about the F015 project is that it is not meant to showcase Mercedes' self-driving tech, which is perhaps best expressed in the S500 Intelligent Drive model. Instead, it is a moving in-car tech showcase meant to demonstrate the kind of cocoon we all might be driving in by perhaps 2030.
"The car has high-resolution screens in almost every interior panel, uses premium leather, wood and metal, and features eye-tracking and touch-control to minimize passenger effort," says Hutzenlaub. "We're creating a personal retreat."
That is a stark contrast to Google's autonomous car project. A recent USA TODAY visit to Google's skunkworks in Mountain View, Calif., revealed a prototype self-driving "pod" – which the search company hopes to test on public roads this summer – that was positively spartan.
If Google is aiming more for a low-frills robotic taxi, Mercedes clearly is gunning for a pricey personal car meant for families who want to catch up while driving. An animated video Mercedes screened underscored that point, showing a man summoning his car with a smartwatch, going to work, then picking up his wife and family.
Another big difference is that Mercedes engineers feel strongly that the leap to autonomous driving will be more easily accepted with vehicles that have the option of being driven manually.
"People will likely always love to drive, so the idea with the F015 really is to use technology to make traffic situations less stressful," says Mercedes future studies and ideation guru Alexander Mankowsky, a one-time social scientist who worked with troubled children.
For Mankowsky, the car of the coming decades will assist humans in reconnecting with each other. He shrugs off the notion that sentient machines are cause for alarm. "We're nowhere near being able to recreate humans with artificial intelligence," he says with a chuckle. "Cars like this one are simply machine intelligence that are making our lives easier."
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