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Transportation

Mercedes Beats Tesla To Hands-Free Driving On the Autobahn (bloomberg.com) 161

Posted by BeauHD from the green-lit dept.
Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz won regulatory approval to deploy a hands-free driving system in Germany ahead of Tesla, gaining an edge in the race to offer higher levels of automation in one of the world's most competitive car markets. Bloomberg: The automaker got the green light to sell its Drive Pilot package for use on stretches of the country's Autobahn network at a speed of up to 60 kilometers (37 miles) per hour, Mercedes said Thursday. The system was approved for Level 3 autonomous driving, a notch higher than Tesla's Level 2 Autopilot system, and will allow a drivers to take their hands off the wheel in slow-moving traffic.

"Drive Pilot enables the driver to turn away from the traffic and focus on certain secondary activities," the luxury-car maker said in a statement. "For example, to communicate with colleagues via the in-car office, to write emails, to surf the Internet or to relax and watch a film." Mercedes got permission for the system only in Germany, but said it's aiming for regulatory approval in other jurisdictions as well. Drive Pilot will be an option for the S-Class and EQS models from around the middle of next year. The automaker hasn't decided how much it will charge for the system, which has approval to be used on around 13,000 kilometers of Germany's highway network.
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Mercedes Beats Tesla To Hands-Free Driving On the Autobahn More

Mercedes Beats Tesla To Hands-Free Driving On the Autobahn

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  • Hopefully we see more races like that.

    • Re:Competition is good (Score:4, Informative)

      by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @03:33AM (#62065219)
      Yes. This is fantastic. Especially when it isn't just Tesla pushing at the regulators. This will give Tesla some more latitude, and give regulators understanding of where to go next. As the systems improve and statistics get better, they can raise the use-case profile and speed limits. One thing all the parties involved need to communicate is the statistical riskiness of these systems in comparison to meat-ware. If the systems are not perfectly safe, but safer than human driving, it makes sense to deploy them in those situations, because the overall safety will be improved. It is unreasonable to benchmark them solely against a theoretical "perfect driver". The old saying comes to mind: Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. The public needs to understand this.

    • Hopefully we see more races like that.

      Also the races that will result on the no-speed-limit Autobahns as this technology matures.

      Germany, the country where the taxis go at 150mph ...

      (been there, done that)

      • Re:Competition is good (Score:4, Informative)

        by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @06:43AM (#62065489)

        Hopefully we see more races like that.

        Also the races that will result on the no-speed-limit Autobahns as this technology matures.

        Germany, the country where the taxis go at 150mph ...

        (been there, done that)

        That's a bit of a myth. There are plenty of speed restrictions on the Autobahns and plenty of German people who pretend those restrictions don't exist, drive 190 in a 120 zone and blink you impatiently, fully expecting you to merge into the side of the truck you are overtaking at the snails pace of 120 kph.

        • Re:Competition is good (Score:4, Informative)

          by Zak3056 ( 69287 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @10:41AM (#62065907) Journal

          "Myth" is a loaded term here. I've been in a taxi in northern Germany (between Stade and Hamburg) going in excess of 180kph down a two lane road. The taxi showed up at the hotel late, the autobahn was a traffic jam, and the driver was committed to getting me to the airport in time to make my flight. The really funny thing is the E-class wagon rode like we were doing half that speed. No white knuckles on my part. I've also been in the back of a Sprinter with five other people while the driver was doing +/- 150kph on the autobahn between Baden-Baden and Karlsruhe at night. THAT involved white knuckles on my part.

          Germans are fucking crazy on the road.

  • No one drives that slowly on the autobahn (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TokyoJimu ( 21045 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @03:05AM (#62065165) Homepage

    Is that for when you're just about to exit? No one drives that slowly on the autobahn, do they?

    • Re:No one drives that slowly on the autobahn (Score:5, Informative)

      by toutankh ( 1544253 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @03:10AM (#62065171)

      Unless there is very dense traffic, I find it actually dangerous to drive that slow on that kind of road.

      • Only in stupid countries where no one checks their side view mirrors for fast oncoming vehicles before stupidly darting out. In Germany, it takes a lot of skill and learning to get a license.

        • If you drive 80km/h behind a truck in the "slow lane" (for example on a hill, the truck speed limit is 90 km/h on highways and trucks are self-limited to 90 km/h), how do you prepare for cars doing 250 km/h in the "fast lane"?
          250 km/h is a common self-limiting speed limit for higher-end cars (Mercedes, Audi, ...).
          Just for reference, the speed difference is 170 km/h or some 45 m/s. That means a car 400 meters behind (a quarter mile) will reach you in 8-10 seconds.

          • You wait until there's nobody in the left lane coming at you at 250km/h. Or you leave a bit more space between you and the truck and get up to speed before changing lanes.

          • If you drive 80km/h behind a truck in the "slow lane" (for example on a hill, the truck speed limit is 90 km/h on highways and trucks are self-limited to 90 km/h), how do you prepare for cars doing 250 km/h in the "fast lane"?

            With your brain. They are a pre-requisite for a drivers license in Europe. Not so much in North America.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

              With your brain. They are a pre-requisite for a drivers license in Europe. Not so much in North America.

              That's because in Europe, you can get around it without driving very easily - there are so many well used public transit options that a car is more optional than necessary. So if you don't want to drive, you don't.

              In North America, that's not usually an option in most places. You're forced to drive even if you don't want to. And lots of people don't want to - they want to play on their phones and other th

    • The speed limit is probably because at those speeds nobody gets killed even if the software majorly screws up.

      As it is it's useful if you regularly drive in traffic jams. They now need to up this to 110 km/h and that's good enough, when you want to go faster or off-autobahn just drive yourself. But that may be a lot more difficult because, unlike in traffic jams, there will be cars around you doing much greater speeds (particularly in Germany).

    • You do for stretches of road work. Which is currently quite common in the East in these years as they are updating all the old DDR highways.

      • 60 km/h? That's a crawl. In the US work zones are usually 55-60 mph, about 90-100 km/h.

        • they have 45 MPH workzones and no one does that speed. No they do full speed (on some roads that can be way over the posted speed)

          TO low speed limits lead to no respect of them even when they are really needed. Don't have 45 work zones on high speed roads when that speed is not really needed to be that low.

          No one does 45-55 on I-294.

        • The limit here is around 90km/h in the work-zone, but since they also lower capacity there is often a stop and go traffic jam as well.

          • Sure, in cities you're going to slow down whether or not you want to. But on a rural freeway? I've been on plenty of Interstates that have fairly low traffic and closing one lane only means that everybody has to travel at the speed of the guy at the front of the line until you get out of the work zone.

            Now, sometimes they just jack the whole thing up. In the early 90s, North Carolina was widening I-85. The entire state was 55, just like in the bad old days. All 234 miles of it. Added about an hour to the tr

            • Yeah, that is not how it is in Germany. The highways connecting Poland and Berlin and the more heavily populated West Germany are highly trafficked. We don't have huge unpopulated areas in Europe in general.

              • I can't claim any broad experience, but driving around central Europe a few years ago (Stuttgart->Zurich->Innsbruck->Salzburg->Vienna->Budapest->Krakow->Prague->Stuttgart), I encountered a lot of fairly-empty roads. I'm sure the highway from Warsaw to Berlin is busier, but it's not like Europe is one big city with rush-hour traffic on every paved surface. And Iberia, I assume, is still considered part of Europe, and there's very little traffic outside of metro areas. Driving in Lisb

    • Never been in the daily traffic congestion on the A5 Baustellen ?

      • Re:A5 Baustellen (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gunnarstahl ( 95240 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @05:12AM (#62065361) Homepage

        I had to travel to Frankfurt from the Wetzlar area for about 10 years and did that mostly by car, which is the A5.

        Monday mornings towards Frankfurt and friday evenings away from Frankfurt were sometimes brutal. On a normal day I could manage the distance with driving too fast in about 45 minutes. But on these times, 2 hours were normal and on bad days it even took me up to 4 hours.

        And it sometimes depended on 5 minutes. Leaving 5 minutes earlier and I avoided the traffic jams, leaving 5 minutes later and I got stuck.

        Happily switched over to rail in 2007, and this was a great decision. The ridiculous waste of time on the autobahn, the aggressive behavior these types of traffic congestions bring out in people... it is just not worth it.

        And in addition I started riding from my home town to the train station by bike. Depending on which trainstation I chose I traveled between 20 and 50 km per day. During the spring / summertimes this was really nice.

        • [...] On a normal day I could manage the distance with driving too fast in about 45 minutes. But on these times, 2 hours were normal and on bad days it even took me up to 4 hours.

          [...]

          Sorry, this should have been:
          On a normal day I could manage the distance with*out* driving too fast in about 45 minutes. But on these times, 2 hours were normal and on bad days it even took me up to 4 hours.

      • "A5 Baustellen" - I believe the traffic jam started in about 1975 and hasn't dissipated yet. There may still be some of the original cars in there too.

    • Is that for when you're just about to exit? No one drives that slowly on the autobahn, do they?

      You actually enter the exit lane at or near full speed (130-ish km/h). You go slower while on the exit lane, not before - that's what it's for.

      But many times you have long stretches of construction sites limited ad 60 or 80. And then, of course, even longet stretches of traffic jams. On longer trips, or while commuting along large cities, I've actually wished many, many times I had a simple autopilot. The situation is stop-n-go rarely exceeding 20-30, never 60, extremely boring, and goes on for hours, while

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's for queues. Not just the autobhan, it works on some other roads too.

      It's not the first though. Nissan has had hands-free driving on Japanese roads for a few years now. Cadillac has had it on US roads for a few years too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kriston ( 7886 )

        Came here to mention this. My car has lane-assist and automatic cruise control but the lane-assist cuts out below 40 MPH and the cruise control at 18 MPH.

        I wish I could have these assistant technologies in heavy traffic instead where they are most useful. If I had them I wouldn't care about sitting in traffic.

    • The minimum speed for the Autobahn is 60km/h - it is meant for heavy trucks etc and is normally only for the slow lane (the center & fast lanes often have their own minimum limits that are higher). So I guess you can just barely hang on the slow lane getting abuse from most of the trucks that are not quite that slow...

      • In Romania there is no minimum speed limit on the highways (you should adapt speed to conditions). However, vehicles with maximum speed 50 km/h or slower aren't allowed on highways.
        Minimum speed limits usually are marked on "climbing" stretches with additional "slow climb" lane - if you can't drive faster than 60 km/h, you MUST stay in the rightmost lane.
        Also, newer trucks have more and more powerful engines so they can stay at their self-limited 90 km/h as much as possible.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 3247 ( 161794 )

        The minimum speed for the Autobahn is 60km/h

        That's a common misconception. The truth is that there is no minimum speed on German motorways. However, access to motorways (Autobahn) and motor roads (Kraftfahrstraße) is limited to motor vehicles that can, on paper, reach a maximum speed of more than 60 km/h (i.e., at least 61 km/h).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by henni16 ( 586412 )

      I would say it basically limits them to the traffic jam that is Berlin's Stadtautobahn during working hours.

    • Re:No one drives that slowly on the autobahn (Score:4, Informative)

      by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @10:00AM (#62065807) Journal

      The autobahns have this glorious place in American imagination as a place unfettered by speed limits when in fact:
      - there isn't all that much autobahn mileage that is speed limit free anymore..I think maybe half (and the Greens are aggressively trying to reduce that)
      - the rest is quite tightly limited, and they are enforced by radar cameras
      - even where it's limit-free, there are pretty stringent limits when the weather is even faintly threatening
      - even where it's limit free, you can quite suddenly find a construction zone where the limit drops precipitously to 90...60...even 30kph without much warning, but certainly tons of radar cameras!

      Finally, even in the places where there is no limit, the weather is perfect, road dry, and no construction... traffic itself provides the reasonable bound to speeds, with complete-stop traffic jams rather common at the usual hours.

    • I should also add that by the time you've reduced your speed to/60 km/h, you're usually off the autobahn for all practical purposes; you're usually already in the curve at to end of the exit ramp.

      But there's another magical meaning to 60 km/h: it's the speed that any vehicle entering the autobahn is required to be able to "reach and hold", by law, under regular conditions. So topping the tech at 60 hm/h is probably a mix of PR stunt and sensible pioneering: it's the lowest permitted speed on the simplest ca

  • Daring (Score:3)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @03:15AM (#62065177) Journal

    "Drive Pilot enables the driver to turn away from the traffic and focus on certain secondary activities," the luxury-car maker said in a statement. "For example, to communicate with colleagues via the in-car office, to write emails, to surf the Internet or to relax and watch a film."

    There is no way I would trust my car enough to do those things.

    • Make that "... trust the *programmers of* my car ...".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        It's not programmers. Not any more. This is a product of machine learning, so machine is learning from the data set provided by... drivers.

        • Re:Daring (Score:4, Insightful)

          by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @04:27AM (#62065297) Journal

          Have you looked at machine learning engineer code? It's more terrifying than software engineer code.

          • Re:Daring (Score:4, Insightful)

            by dromgodis ( 4533247 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @04:32AM (#62065311)

            The only thing even more terrifying is having marketing managers pushing for the deployment of these models into the real world.

          • Re:Daring (Score:5, Informative)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @08:10AM (#62065603)

            The biggest problem isn't really the code. The biggest problem is the fundamental flaw in machine learning AI training when you train it on extremely wide range of material. If the code itself is buggy, that usually fucks up the process during the learning phase or the testing phase that follows it.

            But when your system "learns a wrong thing from source material", even with perfect code and software design, your AI will learn some lessons that are fundamentally incorrect. And no one will know. Until this wrong thing that AI learned results in a failure mode in real world.

            And in world of autonomous driving, those failures have a rather nasty tendency of being catastrophic far too often simply due to the fact of what the AI is asked to do.

            That is what makes it truly scary. It's that even with genuinely good code and good architecture of the whole system, you can still have critical failures that are undetectable until they actually manifest themselves in real world. And you probably will never be able to find out why AI learned this wrong thing. Because machine learning AI is ultimately a black box. We know the code, we know the inputs and we can monitor the outputs. But we have very little understanding of which individual interactions within the neutral network learning process that caused it to learn the wrong thing.

            • That is what makes it truly scary. [...] Because machine learning AI is ultimately a black box.

              I do work in ML.

              Yep, it's a black box, just like people. At least the black box won't get drunk, tired, distracted, believe with no experience that the 4wd on it's crossover with racing tyres makes it magically immune to snow, turn around to yell at its kids, get impatient or angry, try to overtake a vehicle in front because they're convinced it's slow etc etc.

              Hu-mons are really terrible drivers.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                "Democracy is the worst system, except for all other systems we've tried".

                Same applies to your complaint about human drivers. Mindless, utterly autistic utopianism that compares things to imaginary utopia that doesn't exist, rather than real life reality where best in class autonomous driving system isn't even in the same ballpark as human drivers on average has no place in reality. Especially considering the costs of getting it wrong.

                • Same applies to your complaint about human drivers.

                  Except people are busy inventing something better on average.

                  where best in class autonomous driving system isn't even in the same ballpark as human drivers on average has no place in reality.

                  Yet. We are a long way away from an AI based system besting a sober, rested, calm, well trained human driver in a familiar vehicle in familiar conditions. That ain't happening for a while. That comprises some fraction of drivers but not all that many.

                  Last time I was in

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                    There is no "yet" in "AI that can drive as well as people", because we fundamentally do not know what it would even take to begin building such an AI. Let me repeat this for ignorant/marketing people who think that ML is actual AI. We don't even have fundamental conception of what it would take to build an AI that is self aware and therefore can on even hypothetical level compete with a human in complex awareness-centric task like driving the road with many other people on it.

                    ML is fundamentally not somethi

                    • You're pretty weird. Also, are you trying to use "autistic" as some sort of slur? You're so incoherent that it's hard to tell, but it sure looks that way.

                      And yet, we are near the peak of what ML AI can do. All low, middle and even high hanging fruit has been picked.

                      Sure, everything that can be invented has been (--numerous people over the years. At least you're in good company).

                      And so, most of the higher than level 2 efforts have already been abandoned,

                      I know of a bunch. You're clearly unfamiliar with the f

                    • As the old saying goes, "it's better to remain silent and let others think you an idiot that open your mouth and remove all doubt".

                      And yet you keep on speaking.

                      Same reason why you need self awareness to have AI.

                      Oh I see, you're one of those sorts who angrily and bitterly holds on to a definition that isn't universal then loudly attacks anyone who isn't psychic enough to know what's in your head. While your histrionic flailing is passably entertaining, it does get boring pretty fast.

                      Congratulations, you liv

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      Self-awareness is not about debating the meaning of life. Self-awareness is about being aware of oneself.

                      Essentially you made an argument that just because some cars are red, you don't want to buy a red car. Then don't. There are plenty of cars that aren't. Just like there are plenty of self-aware entities right now that have absolutely no interest, and often no real ability to debate a meaning of life.

                      But if you want a car that can do something as complex as reliably drive you to work without input from yo

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Does this use machine learning?

            Seems like it doesn't need an "AI". It follows the lane markings, which are detected by image processing video from a camera using a fixed algorithm. That is well proven tech at this point, and will soon become mandatory (lane departure warning) on new cars.

            Distance to the car in front is measured using radar. Steering inputs and speed control are via algorithm.

            • It absolutely uses machine learning. It is far beyond the reach of any person to manually specify how to process individual pixels and recognize lanes reliably enough for this application in them. We could haggle about whether that constitutes AI but that's pointless.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                It's literally a beginner tutorial example for OpenCV: https://www.analyticsvidhya.co... [analyticsvidhya.com]

                If you read that tutorial you will note that algorithmically detecting simple shapes like lines and low side-count polygons is one of the basic building blocks of machine vision that doesn't use machine learning. Another example would be OCR.

                • Certainly openCV uses machine learning. And kinda-sorta lane following that works quite a bit of the time has been done since the 80s and isn't too hard. As for what it takes to make it work well enough to actually rely on like this, you have no clue. You might as well lecture us about jet airliners on the basis of having folded up a paper airplane.

    • This is a "crawl mode" for when you're stuck in traffic. I'd trust a 1st generation Tesla to do that. There's no where on the autobahn where people drive 60km/h voluntarily.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stooo ( 2202012 )

        >> I'd trust a 1st generation Tesla to do that.
        Don't.
        It drives fine, but you should never let you attention away.
        This allowsthe driver to be distracted, whic is a huge difference.

        • It drives fine, but you should never let you attention away.

          I see you've never been stuck in traffic. Hint: People don't pay attention. Full stop. The existence of self driving features don't change that. There's a reason most people are rear-ended in stop-start traffic.

        • >> I'd trust a 1st generation Tesla to do that.
          Don't.
          It drives fine, but you should never let you attention away.
          This allowsthe driver to be distracted, whic is a huge difference.

          Such as playing video games [businessinsider.com] while driving. This is on top of Tesla vehicles plowing into emergency vehicles [slate.com] or the "self-driving" software which is inconsistent and sometimes dangerous [cnn.com] to both the drivers and those around them.

          • Neilâ(TM)s periodic anti-Tesla (always) articles have gotten to you, but they donâ(TM)t reflect reality. He freely mixes years-old technology with the present without differentiation. In the era where the Tesla hit a truck, the determination was driver inattention. Every, and I mean every, automotive system that used radar would have crashed because all were programmed to ignore stationary objects in order not to brake at large, fixed structures like overpasses. So, drivers were told, before the s

    • "There is no way I would trust my car enough to do those things."

      It works only on the Autobahn when driving under 37mph, so it's just Lane Keeping Assist with 'Follow that car'.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Considering it only works up to 60 kph, and if it crashes they will be liable, it's probably fine. Basically all it does is follow the car in front in low speed traffic.

      The main danger I can see is that the car comes to the end of a queue and everyone is accelerating up to 120 kph+. Meanwhile the driver of the Merc needs time to fold up and put down their newspaper, check the situation and take over driving. Then again that sort of thing happens quite a lot with vehicles that are slow to accelerate anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      "Drive Pilot enables the driver to turn away from the traffic and focus on certain secondary activities," the luxury-car maker said in a statement. "For example, to communicate with colleagues via the in-car office, to write emails, to surf the Internet or to relax and watch a film."

      There is no way I would trust my car enough to do those things.

      Exactly. In fact, it would have been more effective if they spent their AI development efforts in an AI that can do *those* things while YOU drive ;)

  • You really expected to go 37 mph on the autobahn like some kind of a hosenscheisser?

  • "For example, to communicate with colleagues via the in-car office, to write emails, to surf the Internet or to relax and watch a film."

    Wouldn't it be easier and more appropriate to let the computer do those tasks while the human focuses on driving?

  • Have they solved the insurance and responsibility questions?

    If such a vehicle causes an accident while on auto, I guess that the vehicle's insurance will cover it just as for a human driver, but will the car maker pay the deductible since they are the driver? Will the insurance premium be higher if it allows the vehicle to be driven on auto, at least until these control systems have proven themselves to cause less accidents than humans do?

    If it runs over and kills a person, will the car maker (who provided

    • When a carâ(TM)s brakes fail, who pays? When a tree falls on a car, who pays?

      If the accident resulted from willful negligence then whoever did the willful negligence will have to pay. That is established law. If the car encounters some weird not-anticipated or freak situation then it should be treat the same way as if a meteorite hit the car. As in, the insurance company has to suck it up cause that is what they are paid for.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swilver ( 617741 )

      Don't make it harder than it is. You as the vehicle owner are trusting someone or something else to drive the car. If that something or someone messes, guess who pays. Ultimately, you chose to activate this system.

    • I imagine auto insurance companies will do very detailed actuarial analysis on everything involved and that, as usually happens, prices will be the clearest indicative for the rest of us on which they know to be safer.

      So, if cars with AI autopilots enabled and in use begin paying less for insurance, that'll be a clear sign of how they feel about it. If, on the opposite, they start costing more, then stay away from the technology until they don't.

  • https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

    Road deaths per 100K cars:
    UK 5.7
    Italy 6.3
    Germany 6.4
    Australia 7.4
    France 8.4
    USA 14.2

    • "UK 5.7" - that is due to the British cars being mostly broken down and unable to drive.

  • "Drive Pilot enables the driver to turn away from the traffic and focus on certain secondary activities"

    Then their system is not Level-3 autonomous driving. In level 3, the driver must remain alert and ready to take control if the system is unable to execute the task [synopsys.com].

    I understand that this is probably a mistake from the PR department, but this is very serious and it can eventually take away many lives, as already occurred in the fatal accident in Uber's self-driving tests in Arizona [bbc.com], in which the driver was

  • Windshield wiper (Score:3, Insightful)

    by robi5 ( 1261542 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @07:40AM (#62065565)

    Tesla hs difficulty with the most basic functions. Its windshield wiper is a public danger in automatic mode, underestimating and overestimating the rain to the effect of loss of road visibility and dry running, respectively. Either will prompt the driver to manually set it, then keep adjusting it manually. Wouldn't be bad but there's no physical control for it, you need to click a small button at the bottom edge of the screen to get to a modal window, and THEN you can set it, tapping on a small icon again. Imagine doing it while there's bo road visibility in a downpour. Suicidal. Finally they made thenleft whisker end button do a single wipe. I think it is still incredibly risky and in my opinion, hopefully illegal to not have physical whisker control for wiper speed.

    How good can self-driving be if basic sensing fails so spectacularly? The unpaid tier is abysmal, it balks at most curves, and it wholly ignores speed limit signs AND township boundaries with obvious speed reduction needs. It's like someone's final year project.

    That Mercedes could surpass it is nothing for them to be proud of. It's an incredibly low bar

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      To be fair, every implementation of rain sensing wipers I've ever used were shit and sensed rain where there wasn't any or refused to switch on for 5 seconds in a sudden deluge.

      • Agreed. My Ford is so bad at it that I disconnected the sensor to force it to revert to interval mode.

  • Mercedes wins in Germany ... to drive 60 km/h ... (Score:3)

    by fygment ( 444210 ) on Friday December 10, 2021 @08:22AM (#62065625)

    Seriously. They are a revered German company with considerable industrial clout in Germany so no surprise they beat Tesla.

    That said, the dead move faster than 60 km/h on the Autobahn. Everything moves faster than 60 km/h on the Autobahn, even the asphalt. The off ramps might be the only place where cars move at that speed.

    Note: while driving 240 km/h on the Autobahn, I was passed by a Mercedes (amongst others). Don't know what model, it went by too quickly.

  • This is not much, on autobahn up to 60 km/h !?!? I can ride my tesla M3 autonomously on all highways in Europe up to 150 km/h. Yes, I need to keep my hands on the wheel , but this is not a big deal.

  • Many years ago as a college student I picked up a new VW bug at the factory in Wolfsburg and hit the autobahn. Not being familiar with autogahns, I moved to the left lane to pass a slower car and almost got run over by a much faster car that came up out of nowhere.
    I stuck to the slow lanes after that.

  • How long would be needed for someone to become dependent upon the "self-driving" car, and forget how to drive themselves?

  • on stretches of the country's Autobahn network
    at a speed of up to 60 kilometers (37 miles) per hour,

    Who the hell goes 60 kph on the Autobahn?
    Anybody who tried would get rear-end by some guy
    in a Porsche going 200 kph.

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