Mercedes-Benz says Level 3 self-driving option ready to roll

While the specs sound very underwhelming at first (geo-fenced on some roads, very low speeds, no bad weather), they seem to be so confident in their system, that they will take responsibility for the car when in autopilot. AFAIK, no other manufacturer does this for their systems (which capabilities they often make rather wild claims about).

About 4 months ago I wrote in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29520685" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29520685</a><p>&gt; I&#x27;m currently driving a pretty new Mercedes (company car), and its lane assistant regularly tries to kill me in construction areas because it wants me to follow the regular, currently inactive lane markings.<p>I&#x27;ve gotten an even newer Mercedes since then (A250e, build finished 2022-03), and it&#x27;s really impressive.<p>The lane assistant no longer makes a mess in construction areas.<p>It has adaptive cruise control, which works REALLY well, and I&#x27;d be comfortable relying on that on the highway, for example. It&#x27;s sometimes breaks when I wouldn&#x27;t, in dense traffic when I&#x27;m approaching an obstruction that I will drive around later.<p>It has an enhanced lane assistant which does small corrections much earlier than the regular lane assistant, which I found annoying and switched off.<p>It has sensors to the side and back to be aware of approaching cars when switching lanes.<p>Long trips have become much more less stressful with that, and I can totally believe that this is on a good way towards level 3 self-driving. (This doesn&#x27;t include the self-driving package, it&#x27;s &quot;just&quot; what you get when you pay for the regular security&#x2F;assistance tech).

I really wish cars removed from residential areas and inner city, basically anywhere people are walking around.<p>It makes self driving much easier and also eliminate the need for parking. You would walk a bit more (like five minutes), to a bus stop and be picked up by a car. Much healthier and probably causes less congestion too.<p>Within city&#x27;s and residential areas you can have nice bike and walking paths and more room for nature.

A point I commonly hear made from both Tesla and Comma.ai for example is that Lidar is far too expensive with Waymo&#x27;s vehicle costing a total of $200,000 and that cameras alone are sufficient for full self driving. I do think that cameras alone are probably sufficient for full self-driving but every time I hear this point I think to myself that self driving progress is moving so slowly on the camera-only front that Lidar might become so affordable by the time camera-only makes substantial progress that by that point it was much more efficient to just have been developing with Lidar from the start. Am I missing something or just completely wrong? I would really appreciate any insight on this.

What most people here complaining about the &quot;40 mph&quot; limit do not realize is that below 40mph is where it&#x27;s hardest to implement proper self driving, as majority of below 40mph driving will be in city streets with pedestrians, frequent turns and more variables. Anything higher will generally be in highways where lane assist cruise control systems are already more than good enough.<p>I will gladly take a system that can drive itself confidently under 40mph in city, and use basic lane assist (and maybe lane changes and exit ramps like in Teslas) for highways. Cant wait!

&quot;it&#x27;s geofenced to certain roads, and only work under 40mph&quot;, &quot; you should not use this in the rain&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=sMNnOosjrBo&amp;ab_channel=Engadget" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=sMNnOosjrBo&amp;ab_channel=Engad...</a>

Meanwhile at Tesla: &quot;We&#x27;re the industry leaders, wait for us!&quot;

This is powered by nvidia i think: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.nvidia.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2021&#x2F;04&#x2F;16&#x2F;mercedes-benz-eqs-hyperscreen&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.nvidia.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2021&#x2F;04&#x2F;16&#x2F;mercedes-benz-eqs-h...</a><p>This means if mercedes have it, so will many other automakers since nvidia sells to everyone.

This is real progress.<p>Ad video.[1]<p>Still very limited. Won&#x27;t work at night. Has a LIDAR, but it&#x27;s in the front grille, which only gives it enough of a view for anti-collision.<p>We should be seeing review videos soon.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4Ue7ISC3eHQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4Ue7ISC3eHQ</a>

Recent discussion: &quot;Mercedes to accept legal responsibility for a vehicle when Drive Pilot is active&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30763522" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30763522</a>

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For me the corollary of this (&quot;you just invented a more expensive railway&quot;) is the business model assumptions that go away. Long distance trucking is still a likely winner, but there is still the &quot;last mile &#x2F; last off ramp&quot;.<p>None of the business models touted today survive the new railway problem. That&#x27;s not to say it&#x27;s not a valuable technology - it&#x27;s just we cannot whistle up a human shaped robot that just does what we want.<p>In the same way a machine is shaped by its function, our cities and infrastructure green will be shaped by their function.<p>Disneyland is built one level up, so that all the service tunnels (with I am sure some self driving robots) can get around without getting in the way of people. Whatever we rebuild our (climate neutral) cities to be, i think less surface space given to transport will be high

there should be a qualification level for vehicles that can fully self drive at low speeds in heavy traffic on the highway so you can nap through traffic jams and then later enjoy your performance automobile by driving it yourself when it&#x27;s clear.<p>half the point of fancy cars is that they&#x27;re fun to drive.

Seems like we need to re-run the DARPA Grand Challenge.<p>Local car clubs should be happy to work together to define a route and run the race.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=M2AcMnfzpNg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=M2AcMnfzpNg</a>

Is there a map somewhere that discloses which roads it will be permitted on?

I&#x27;ll consider using a self-driving system when it can safely drive the length of the Tail of the Dragon without using preloaded data for it (that would be cheating).<p>The dragon has good pavement, clear markings, the occasional driveway, and 318 curves in 11 miles (18km). In this video from December 2021, the Model 3 crosses the yellow line repeatedly into the oncoming lane.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Oz4yMGbRa4Q" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Oz4yMGbRa4Q</a> (long video)

One of the youtube channels I watch has been testing driver assistance features, and apparently Mercedes didn&#x27;t do so well. I have not watched the video yet, and I&#x27;m just going by the clickbait title: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=irFzESPCegA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=irFzESPCegA</a><p>They tested a &quot;brand new Mercedes GLS 450 4MATIC with the maximum level of driver assistance available in this model.&quot;<p>I wonder how much tech that shares with their L3 system..

Meanwhile in Jerusalem<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;pDyMzz8HMIc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;pDyMzz8HMIc</a>

This is the only way to roll out a product unless you&#x27;re a die-hard technologist who believes in &#x27;death by marketing&#x27;.

It needs to be going under 40mph <i>and</i> on a highway, which sounds like this only works in stop and got traffic on the freeway.<p>Pretty cool.

I wonder if this is in-house development or are they just riding on NVidia stack? Traditional car companies don’t have culture in place to create necessary AI infrastructure and attract the talent pool.

Looking forward to it. Hopefully it’ll be better&#x2F;equal to Tesla’s FSD. I assume it won’t be, but idk the range of how good FSD is really.

What exactly is this &quot;internationally valid certification&quot; they&#x27;re banging on about and how is it the first?

European Exceptionalism, ladies and gentlemen. The real engineering, no fluff.

&gt; Mercedes-Benz Cars says it plans to release “Drive Pilot,” a conditionally automated Level 3 system for automated driving<p>I think it&#x27;s pretty irresponsible to publish a picture of a driver taking his eyes off the road to play Tetris on a system designed for Level 3.

What I don&#x27;t get: if deep learning can recognize a crosswalk with 99.99% accuracy, that&#x27;s very impressive. Yet it is not enough.

Is it still designed to mow down pedestrians?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.caranddriver.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;a15344706&#x2F;self-driving-mercedes-will-prioritize-occupant-safety-over-pedestrians&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.caranddriver.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;a15344706&#x2F;self-driving-mer...</a><p>Mercedes ethics: Save the people who can afford lawyers.

&gt; Drive Pilot can only be engaged on a certain highways, and the car must not exceed 40 miles per hour.<p>&gt; The system will only operate during the daytime, in reasonably clear weather, and without overhead obstructions. Inclement weather, construction zones, tunnels, and emergency vehicles will all trigger a handover warning [1].<p>There&#x27;s a <i>very</i> limited subset of areas that one would be able to use this.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cleantechnica.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;03&#x2F;23&#x2F;mercedes-will-be-legally-responsible-while-drive-pilot-system-is-engaged&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cleantechnica.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;03&#x2F;23&#x2F;mercedes-will-be-legall...</a>

If tesla still has issues with self-driving cars and they are like a decade if not more ahead of everyone else.<p>I dont believe this PR stunt.