- Technology that keeps you safe.
Actual CEO of Mercedes-Benz.
That's not a real child.
Right now I am in San Jose, California,
in front of the San Francisco 49ers Levi Stadium.
It's 30 mile an hour winds today,
and we're here with Mercedes-Benz,
and we're gonna be testing out a lot
of their new safety features.
And we even have an interview with Ola,
who is the CEO of Mercedes-Benz.
We are now out of the wind inside of a Mercedes-Benz EQS.
We're doing the best that we can,
and it's actually made it more fun
to kind of see some of this madness.
We are going to test out some of the safety features
of Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
The first one, we have this Mercedes in front of us
and this is going to be the evading software.
Okay, we're going pretty quick.
Here we go.
30 miles... Evade!
Whoa, there we go. (laughing)
Did it give you any type of warning on the screen?
Like lights or anything or just dinging?
- You can see the red triangle.
(slow speed voice recording) - Evade! Whoa, there we go.
(driver speaking German)
- The plan now is there's this short person,
that's not a real person, that is in the road,
and we're gonna test the human avoidance software.
It's not really called that - Active Brake Assist.
- Active Braking System.
That's the better term for it.
There's a nice EQS right there.
I love that car.
So we're gonna be following this guy?
- [Driver] Yep.
- Oh, and then he's gonna move outta the way
and then a kid will be there.
- He's going to occlude it
so that's just a little bit more interesting for us.
- Okay, here we go.
All right, follow the EQS.
We're going 10, 20, 30.
30 feels really fast in a parking lot.
35. Okay, here we go.
Turning, following the EQS.
Human! (car alert beeping)
Oh, ho ho. Okay.
Human. (car alert beeping)
Oh, ho ho.
Human. (car alert beeping)
- Oh, ho ho. Okay.
(laughing) I actually, like, reached forward to touch this,
to stop myself, to protect myself, from that.
And then what's really cool about it,
is the seatbelt actually sucked into the wall.
Is that a thing? - Yep.
- Yeah, the seatbelt sucked in and pulled me tighter.
You know like there's a thing with seat belts
where it stops you from going forward.
This takes that to another whole level where it actually
pulls it in and holds you in before you even stop.
That's pretty cool.
So there's a motorcycle here that just keeps falling over,
so we're gonna skip the motorcycle one.
Sorry, motorcycle.
Oh yeah, look at that little guy.
There is a fake red car that looks like a Mercedes.
The wheels don't turn.
It's like a blow-up one.
That is a funny little car.
Is somebody with a remote control
just controlling that thing?
- It's following a pre-programmed path.
- Oh, active brake assist.
There's the red car.
It's coming out.
Oh, he's stopping, he's gonna merge.
He merged. In front of us. (car alert beeping)
Okay, why does that always scare me?
Oh, it braked again.
Right as he looked away.
Did you see that?
The driver looked away, and then the car stopped on its own.
That was pretty good.
That showed me that it is the system,
and it's not the professional driver here.
(slow speed recorded voice) Oh, it braked again.
(driver speaking German)
- I don't know what they're saying right now
'cause I don't speak German.
Okay, so the last one is, sorry, Active
- Intersection Drive Away Assist.
- Intersection
- It's part of the active brake assisted
- Look at that, two different cars
and you start pulling out.
(car alert beeping)
Whoa, that's some brakes.
(slow speed voice recording) Whoa, that's some brakes.
Next thing, let's go.
Okay. Oh my gosh, I'm not faking it with the hat.
Like, everywhere. There it goes!
See, I told you. There it goes.
Yes, like I said, I'm not faking it.
It really is windy and I'm wearing a hat for this video
because I got a haircut yesterday at Great Clips
and they didn't do a great job.
They usually do, but every once in a while
they cut it too short.
Let's get out this wind.
This is the Mybach, the Mercedes, Maybach?
Maybach? Mybach? I'm saying it wrong.
- [Announcer] Maybach S 680.
- Maybach S 680.
This is a really nice, expensive, car.
This is Lidar right here.
This is a camera right here.
This car is equipped with cameras all around it.
And if you look on the side, it says,
"DRIVE PILOT inside."
And what's inside is about
to be inside of the "Drive Pilot inside."
This car MSRP is, for with all of the options,
if it's the highest level options, $227,000.
Check it out.
This is the backseat of this car.
They are lounging like bosses right now.
If you know anything about
the US franchise model of Mercedes-Benz,
you're not gonna get anything for MSRP,
it's gonna be more than that.
So my guess, maybe throw another 50,000 on top of that?
This could be a $300,000 car.
Now the one that we're driving right now,
this is one that has a lot of maybe extra tech,
that it's like a mule, it's a test car for them.
So if you add all that into it,
I would guess we're probably in like a $400,000 car.
That's my guess. Maybe five.
Let's say, half a million dollar car.
That's not from Mercedes-Benz, that's my own estimate.
So now we're gonna go take this on a drive
in San Francisco, Silicon Valley.
Test out what the latest and greatest in autonomy is
from Mercedes-Benz.
This is where level three autonomy really comes in clutch.
Traffic, check it out.
We are in traffic right now.
We are going slower than 40 miles an hour.
This is a very common thing in California
and our driver can look wherever he wants.
There's cameras that are looking at his eyeballs
to see where he is looking but if he looks away
it doesn't stop the car and it doesn't get mad at him.
But look at that, he's not touching the wheel.
He's not touching the brake pedal or the gas pedal.
In fact, he is watching a movie right now.
This is not an exterior shot of where we're driving.
The car is driving, it's keeping us in the lane,
watching everything with Lidar,
with cameras all over the car.
It's like, "Don't hit that Tesla."
It's just right there.
Somebody's already hit that Tesla.
The big news that is breaking here tomorrow
for you, it's already broken,
but for tomorrow here, oh, look at that.
See, a crash, right there.
That guy crashed into that Tesla.
Wrong car to crash into, buddy. (laughing)
It already has the cameras,
but we just saw a crash right there.
Meanwhile, our driver, Lucas here, is not even driving,
but there's some restrictions.
It'll only go up to 40 miles an hour.
You have to be on, like, a highway like this,
and you need to have, like, a nice sunny day,
or the weather can't be just like snowy, crazy rainy,
and it will do level three.
Now in California, it's not approved.
This is a test vehicle, Lucas is a test driver.
But, breaking news,
in the state of Nevada,
this level three with Mercedes-Benz is approved.
And as far as I know, this is the first level three
autonomous driving vehicle that is approved in America,
and it's from Mercedes-Benz.
We're not driving very fast,
we're driving 12 miles an hour right now.
But I will tell you from my experience with having autopilot
in the Tesla that's been around before the FSD beta,
I don't live in a big city,
but whenever we take road trips to Los Angeles,
I love putting it in autopilot and letting the car go.
But with the Tesla
you are required to keep your hand close by,
ready to take over
and you gotta watch and be ready for that.
It is actually exhausting to drive in stop and go traffic
when you're stopping, going, looking around.
That guy looked away for a second,
and he hit a Tesla, like, it happens
when we're only going 12 miles an hour
and it does take a toll.
So how nice to be able to have this feature.
He hasn't touched his wheel this entire time
that I've been talking.
He's just still glued to this.
He's an engineer.
- My favorite movie.
- Your favorite show.
I'm impressed, usually they're buggy.
Honestly, they're buggy, when we go on these press trips
and the cars are messing up
and he's still just chilling, he's chilling here.
Look at those hands, not moving.
It's still driving and this is still on there,
and we still have traffic.
- And we're missing our exit. - And we're missing our exit.
We might have to go to Alcatraz and do some sightseeing,
in this Mercedes Benz.
We're going to be looking
at the third generation MBUX for Mercedes-Benz.
Behind me is a spaceship-looking vehicle.
This is the new E-class
that's going to be going inside of there.
And so I want to know everything about how this thing works,
and so I thought that I would get an expert for you today.
So today we have one of the best experts at Mercedes-Benz.
Ola, pleasure to meet you. (laughing)
This is the actual CEO - Good to see you again.
- of Mercedes-Benz,
came all the way from Germany?
- Yeah - Right?
So Ola used to be in the Alabama plant, or factory,
for four or five years, right?
In Huntsville, so I've been there.
It's amazing, you make the EQS SUV there
and the EQE SUV, right?
- Yeah, it's been the plant for our SUVs since
more than 25 years now.
We started it in the nineties
and it's now our biggest operations in the US.
We just put a billion dollars over the last years
into the plant to retool it for going electric.
- Wow. It's so good.
So today we're inside of the EQE and this is the MBUX.
And I'll be honest, like they just told me,
it's very top secret the whole time,
and so there's not much that I know about it.
So would you mind sharing with me
some things that are different
and that you're excited about with the new MBUX.
- So this is actually the brand new E-class
that we're gonna launch later this year,
and today at our MBOS, Mercedes-Benz Operating System,
strategy update we're giving people here a sneak preview
of what the world and the digital world
of the new E-class is going to look like.
- Okay.
- And in fact, when we talk about an operating system,
this is the very first time that we at Mercedes,
have from the ground up, programmed a complete domain.
So all the software that you see here, it comes from us.
It's a proprietary purpose-built system,
but the beauty of it is, it's open.
- Okay.
- So we integrate and partner with the best
to deliver the best customer experience.
- That's great. So there should be things, I would imagine,
coming in the future, like,
Over-The-Air updates that you could do that maybe
before would be difficult
because you don't own everything with it.
Does that change things at all?
- Absolutely, Over-The-Air is one of the key words.
Whereas you could argue that
a Mercedes ages "like a good French wine."
But now with full Over-The-Air capability here
it's like you have the master winemaker
give you the best of the new harvest every year.
So you can download new features all the time,
and with this car we're launching a couple
of new cool things as well.
- So there's a few people that may not understand, like,
E-class, there's different levels.
I've driven a lot of the S-class, the EQS,
and it's an incredible car,
incredibly comfortable, has the full screen,
the hyper screen that goes across,
the E-class is the more economical version,
but when you come inside of here
I don't feel like it's super economical.
Like this is a beautiful screen,
this is really high quality in here.
Even though it's gonna be,
have we announced the pricing for the E-class?
- We're not announcing the pricing today,
but when we launch the EQS
and we put this insane hyper screen
into the car, you know, pillar to pillar,
the whole dashboard is covered by a screen,
customers around the world, they were literally blown away.
- It was great.
- And they go, like, can we have this in every car, please?
(host chuckles)
So now we have made a strategic decision
that we will offer a full-dashboard-screen environment
for every new model that we are launching.
- Wow.
- And the E-class is no exception.
And just to point out one really cool feature here,
let's say you and I are out driving, yeah?
We're having a conversation,
but after a while you say, "I wanna watch a movie."
You can open up the sync app, you select your movie,
and you want to watch it.
But of course safe driving is paramount,
and it's part of the DNA of Mercedes,
and the driver's not allowed to watch a movie
while driving for good reason.
But the technology of this screen is such that
you will be watching the movie
and while you're watching it,
the screen will look dark to me.
- [Host] From there it will be dark.
- Yeah, from there, so it just looks dark,
but it's not, you have a crisp,
perfect picture watching the movie
and I can concentrate on the driving.
So it's just these little features
putting the customer,
putting the customer experience at the center of things,
and there's just a world of great features in this car.
- So one of the things that we did yesterday
that was great is we got a sample
and a taste of the level three autonomy
that is coming to some vehicles.
It's approved in Nevada in a few Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
I would imagine at some point,
like say the E-class is approved for that,
and you purchased the option for level three autonomy,
you could do a software update and watch the movie,
not just on here
but have it on this main screen
and be able to watch it.
- Absolutely.
Already today we were the first car manufacturer
that got a level three system certified, started in Germany,
and now taking the first steps into the US with Nevada,
working on California next.
And where is it still low-ish speeds today,
up to, you know, 40, 42 miles an hour, something like that,
those speeds over the years will come up.
But let's say you're on the 101 here in the Silicon Valley,
and as often we know, it's a traffic jam,
you push the button on the steering wheel,
you're in level three mode
as a driver, if I'm alone in the car, yeah,
you can watch a movie.
- One question about, like, the US side of things,
I love doing road trips in electric cars.
How do you see the future
of Mercedes-Benz doing your own network,
here in America?
- We have one of the most, if not the most,
comprehensive roaming agreement worldwide.
More than a million public charge points are already hooked
up to a Mercedes, so - Wow.
- More or less every provider that is out there.
We got that covered, but we said, "That's not enough."
We want to add another layer to that.
So to really send a signal to our customers
we're serious about the electric mobility.
We're going to do this, we're now gonna invest
over the next five to 10 years a significant amount of money
in the United States, in Europe, in China,
and some of the other markets,
build also our own charging networks.
It will start later this year,
and of course we're looking at, you know,
where are the Mercedes customers?
Where do they drive?
And so you try to find the right
geographical spots to do this.
- Okay, well there you go.
You heard it first.
The E-class, this is it.
The brand new E-class,
interior, the exterior, it looks like a spaceship
because not everything's been announced yet,
but at least we got the first look
with the top expert.
He would argue probably that there's a lot
more top experts that are the engineers,
that are the people that really build this stuff,
but it all starts with the leader.
So Ola, thank you for the interview.
Appreciate it. This looks great.
I'm excited for it.
- Great to see you again.
- Check out this giant Mercedes-Benz logo.
It is huge.
This is part of the Mercedes-Benz headquarters
in Sunnyvale, California.
I just make YouTube videos about cars,
and show different things,
and I get to do really cool things
like see new products before they come out,
interview really influential people in the world.
I'm grateful for these opportunities
to do these random things.
And that's it. Back home.
See ya.
(upbeat music)
I may or not have broke that right there,
but it did move as I jumped.
(wind blowing)
(laughing)
It's not a real child.
If there's a football game today
there would be, like, hundred yard punts.
You could probably kick it out, oh,
look at that big thing that blew over there.
- Oh.
- That big red, whatever that is.
- What is that?
- Wow. I don't know.
- That is a berry, or something?
- A bunch of 49ers things are just falling over.