Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot 95: The fastest certified Level 3 self-driving system

USA Today

02-05-2025

Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot 95: The fastest certified Level 3 self-driving system
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Mercedes-Benz chairman Ola Källenius settles back in the driver's seat of the Mercedes-Benz EQS sedan and reaches into the center console. 'Popcorn?' he asks, as the opening credits of the original Ghostbusters movie play out in the center of high-definition Hyperscreen that stretches across the dash. There's a crisp rat-a-tat-tat from the snare drum, then the bass kicks in as Ray Parker Jr rasps: If there's something strange... In your neighborhood... Who ya gonna call…
As PR stunts go, it's a bit… ahem… corny. But what's not corny is that fact that the Mercedes-Benz boss and I are going through the motions of watching a movie while the EQS drives itself along the autobahn for miles at a time at a smooth and steady 59 mph, demonstrating a key performance attribute of Mercedes-Benz's upgraded Level 3 autonomous driving system, Drive Pilot 95, weeks before the official media drives.
Drive Pilot, the world's first legally approved Level 3 autonomous driving system, made its debut in 2022. Its operating parameters were tightly controlled, limited to traffic traveling at no more than 40 mph on German autobahns. Drive Pilot 95 will, under certain conditions, allow Mercedes-Benz S-Class and EQS models equipped with the $6,600 option to self-drive for an indefinite period in the right lane of autobahns at speeds of up to 95 km/h (59 mph). Owners of cars equipped with the original Drive Pilot system will be able to upgrade to Drive Pilot 95 free of charge.
Mercedes-Benz plans to introduce Drive Pilot into the U.S., which it sees as a big market for autonomous driving technologies and is currently working on changing the system's operating parameters to suit U.S. road and traffic conditions. While first movers and fast movers like Tesla and Chinese automakers have been grabbing the headlines in terms of autonomous driving (though Tesla's much hyped Full Self-Driving option is not a certified Level 3 autonomous drive system) Mercedes-Benz has been quietly working at the frontiers of the technology.
The slow pace is deliberate, insists Källenius. 'Mercedes-Benz's philosophy is you deploy a little bit less than what the technology can do, but you continue to develop the technology,' he says. Engineers confirm that in addition to working on a U.S.-optimized version of Drive Pilot that will allow faster operating speeds than Drive Pilot 95, it plans to have the system able to offer full Level 3 autonomous driving capability at speeds up to 80 mph in strict Germany by the end of the decade.
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Ola Källenius is heading the company that invented the automobile through one of the most challenging and transformative eras of the automotive age. Born in Västervik, Sweden, in 1969, he did two years compulsory military service before gaining a degree in finance and accounting at the Stockholm School of Economics before studying management at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland and joining Daimler-Benz in 1993 as a management trainee.
He's no dry, colorless beancounter, though. During his career, Källenius worked with Ron Dennis at McLaren's futuristic headquarters in England, overseeing production of the Mercedes SLR McLaren hypercar, has run the company's F1 powertrain business, Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, and headed AMG from 2010 to 2013. He speaks passionately and knowledgeably about F1 — he's excited about the prodigiously talented 18-year-old Italian, Kimi Antonelli, stepping into Lewis Hamilton's seat at the Mercedes F1 team when the seven-time world champion goes to Ferrari next year — and has just spent his own money on a Mercedes-AMG SL 63. 'It's a fabulous car. I wanted one I could keep for my son to drive one day.'
Ola Källenius well understands developing cars that can drive themselves is just one thing that's challenging the best and brightest engineering brains at Mercedes-Benz. They're also trying to pivot the three-pointed star away from the internal combustion engine that has powered its products for more than a century, and towards EVs; trying to figure out how make vehicles that use fewer resources and dump less carbon into the atmosphere through their entire life cycles. And most importantly, they're trying to figure out how to do all that while staving off the threat from China's more nimble and lower cost automakers.
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'The automotive industry is going through a profound change,' agrees Källenius, who says that change is being driven by a systemic shift towards decarbonization and CO₂ neutrality, where the electricity for EVs will come from non-fossil sources. 'We can debate how long it will take,' he says, 'but the destination is zero emissions. That is an enormous industrial and infrastructure undertaking, but I don't think too many people are debating the destination.'
If you doubt that statement, follow the money, insists Källenius. He says that in a disruptive business environment new venture capital is usually deployed to unseat the incumbents, and it's clear where that money is not going in the auto industry. 'Of the many billions in venture capital out there, none is going into replicate the [internal combustion engine] business model that exists now,' he says bluntly.
And that's why, despite worrying signs that consumer demand has slowed, Mercedes-Benz remains committed to EVs. 'It's better to play offense than defense,' Källenius says. Sitting back and waiting and watching would conserve capital, he admits, implicitly acknowledging the vast sums Mercedes-Benz is spending on the development of EVs that, so far, aren't selling in large numbers and generating large profits. But that strategy, he says would put the company in danger of missing the tipping point when electricity does become the mainstream automotive powertrain.
Källenius agrees the journey to that tipping point is taking longer than everyone expected but points out that it took a while before the iPhone took off and crushed the BlackBerry. 'Now, I'm acutely aware the car and the industrial footprint of the auto industry is not the same as that of the mobile phone industry,' he says. 'But if and when the tipping point happens and you're not there, that could be [an existential threat] for a company.'
As mainstream automakers began to embrace the technology, Mercedes-Benz bullishly announced the company would be building mainly EVs by 2030. Ola Källenius tapped the brakes on that statement in an interview earlier this year, saying it meant the company would not be investing in new internal combustion engine-based vehicle architectures beyond 2025. 'We have not announced the date when the last internal combustion engine Mercedes-Benz will go away,' he said, 'but we have put our capital allocation and engineering resource into preparing the company for a full EV lineup.'
In July, however, Källenius announced Mercedes-Benz planned to spend about $15 billion on research and development to ensure its internal combustion engines would meet ever tightening emissions regulations well into the 2030s. 'An overhaul of the combustion portfolio was always part of the plan,' he insists. 'On the vehicle side, there's a benefit to be an incumbent. The whole infrastructure is there, so we're able to create flexibility in our product offering well into the 2030s, because we don't know when the tipping point [to EVs] will come.'
Källenius admits that building internal combustion engine vehicles alongside EVs well into the 2030s means Mercedes-Benz will be a much more complex business than the switch to pure EVs production promised. But he says sticking with internal combustion engines will also generate a contribution margin on a fundamentally sound combustion business also for longer, and that will ultimately help Mercedes-Benz profitably make the transition to EVs.
'We think that we can manage through this incredibly intense technological and product development cycle,' Källenius says. 'Our balance sheet shows we have the liquidity and the firepower to do this. We know what the destination is. The destination is a zero emission, intelligent digital vehicle. But if the tail of the internal combustion engine vehicle is longer [than we expected], then we will take advantage of that.'
While this transition is underway, does Mercedes-Benz, along with other western automakers, need protection from the growing wave of low-cost Chinese EVs entering their markets? An unabashed free trader, Källenius pushes back hard on the idea that heavy tariffs on Chinese imports will give western automakers breathing space to get their businesses into shape to compete. 'I the understand political reasons, and I think we should do whatever we can within WTO rules to create level playing fields in the main economic regions, but an escalating tariff based potential trade war is the wrong direction,' he says. 'But even if it could protect some players in the short term, that is dangerous in the long term. The heat of competition has always been the best way to create innovation.'
What about problems with the Chinese market itself, where fierce competition between dozens of domestic automakers combined with slowing demand as the economy there has cooled has impacted both sales and profitability? Källenius likens the current situation in China to that in the U.S. and Europe, where hundreds of automakers existed at the beginning of the 20th century, but very few survived to see the 21st. 'I believe there will be some kind of consolidation in China,' he says. 'How long that will take is difficult to say, but that will keep an enormous competitive pressure and intensity in that biggest car market in the world for the foreseeable future.'
Photos by MotorTrend