Mercedes is reporting today that the Level 3 59 mph version of the Drive Pilot has been approved in Germany. After receiving permission from the German Federal Motor Transport Authority, the country’s sales release is anticipated to take place in the spring of 2025. This is a free upgrade that will be sent to current Drive Pilot customers over the air or in person at a Mercedes workshop; no hardware has to be changed—it is all software.
Mercedes’ conditionally automated driving technology is called Drive Pilot. It is now the quickest certified Level 3 autonomous driving system in regular production cars according to the latest update. The Drive Pilot option for the Mercedes EQS costs $6,600.
The most recent update allows you to use Drive Pilot on the 8,196-mile German Autobahn network at speeds of up to 59 mph “under certain conditions.” When Drive Pilot is engaged, the driver is legally permitted to engage in other activities, such as working, reading a newspaper, watching TV, streaming movies, or just unwinding.
In addition to having a redundant architecture for steering, braking, and electrics, the system can, of course, return the driving responsibility to the driver in an emergency. The technology will engage the hazard warning lights and brake the vehicle to a controlled stop if the driver is unable to take control even “after increasingly intense prodding and expiration of the takeover time.”
Drive Pilot makes use of over 35 sensors, including LiDAR, cameras, radars, and ultrasonic sensors. Inherently, there are redundancies “for precise real-time detection of the environment” because these all operate on different physical principles, according to Mercedes. Accurate positioning is within a few centimeters.
