Mercedes-Benz L3 China First Test: What Grade?

Hello, I'm the director of the tram. Hello again.

I went to Zibo for a barbecue last week. A barbecue brings a city with fire at a time, which may indeed be something that China people who love to eat can do.

To tell the truth, this Zibo barbecue ... I really didn't eat anything. But another purpose of this trip: Mercedes-Benz mass-produced L3 autopilot technology * China's first trial, but it is worth mentioning.

0 1? In the past 1886, 42-year-old karl friedrich benz invented a single-cylinder gasoline engine and the world's first tricycle without a horse. It was 65438+1October 29th, the world automobile birth day.

One hundred years later, the giant has long since passed away, and the original Ben Ci&Son Company has already merged into the world-famous Daimler-Benz Company.

With the constant changes of the times and the vigorous development of industrial technology, human travel on the horizon has changed from a carriage to a car, and the coverage has changed from exclusive to everyone.

These are the stories that we look back on standing in the long river of the automobile industry. They seem as plain as water, but in the commercial market and the international pattern, the past was challenging and magnificent.

1986 Mercedes-Benz has started the research on autonomous driving technology through Prometheus project.

Even today, the development and application of "autonomous driving" technology is still controversial.

Therefore, it is conceivable that although Mercedes-Benz never claimed to be a "driver's car", people-oriented and making drivers happy must be the development theme of all German automobile manufacturers in that era.

Therefore, this "research" is not as in-depth as Mercedes-Benz's research in other aspects.

Borrowing the original words of Zhihu author Min in his answer: Now, it is indeed a mistake for Daimler not to continue investing in autonomous driving; Otherwise, there are other companies such as Waymo.

This sentence is correct. But it's not right.

The appropriate place is: from today's point of view, according to Daimler's abundant capital and R&D strength, coupled with such advanced prediction and research, there are so many market vehicles as research samples and other factors-very likely, luxury cars = Mercedes-Benz, autonomous driving = Mercedes-Benz.

What is wrong is that this matter can only be seen today. The development of commercial companies will never be if. Whenever a grand strategy fails or a large-scale accident occurs, all internal and external problems such as law, compliance, data protection, ethics and morality will gush out, which may eventually lead to extinction or acquisition.

In those days, selling a good car was more important than anything else.

Of course, in this era, by the same token, selling a good car is more important than anything else.

As a result, Mercedes-Benz has gone from the earliest attempt in the field of autonomous driving to the firm exploration now.

What do you mean?

It means: from now on, cars should sell well, and this job is really good.

02? Mercedes-Benz concept In Weibo, we often share the intelligent assisted driving progress of domestic new car manufacturers, and many KOC and smart car owners are constantly paying attention to it.

Among this kind of heavy and moderate users, we can see everyone's addiction and recognition of chasing Apple's new machines and technologies. For example, some car owners of Wei Xiaoli can experience the latest intelligent assisted driving functions on expressways and expressways for the first time after the late-night OTA, and share them seriously in communities.

Although there is no admirable individual like Jobs in this circle, in the process of full social attributes and good technology, the preemptive technical experience and measured sharing have brought great differences to smart cars.

Some people are extremely in favor, and naturally there are also extreme objections.

Not to mention ordinary consumers, even car manufacturers themselves are aware of the legal, compliance, data protection, moral and other issues we mentioned earlier.

More "radical" domestic car companies are proving their ideas and helping the development of enterprises by increasing research and development, rapid iteration and promoting regulations.

And the more conservative joint ventures and luxury brands, some have fallen behind, and some are taking off.

The way Mercedes-Benz chooses is: safety first, convenience and comfort second. By 2050, they all want to firmly complete the vision of "zero fatal traffic accidents".

This means that Mercedes-Benz that needs both (current market) and (future positioning) needs to adopt L2/L3/L4 multi-stage * * * scheme.

After consulting a lot of information, I sorted out the core ideas and requirements of Mercedes-Benz for solutions at all levels for your reference. Many of them are propaganda words, which you can understand by yourself.

L2, 40 basic functions, 13 Daily scenes: diverse functions and complete scenes; Safe and reliable, practical and easy to use.

L2+, navigation assistance, autonomous overtaking and ramp access: a smarter, more convenient and more immersive experience.

L3, drive? Pilot, conditional automatic driving: give back the time to consumers, be accurate, real-time, intelligent and safe (reminder+redundancy+avoidance+braking, etc.). ), and feel at ease. At present, the maximum speed limit is 60 km/h.

Next generation L3: The ultimate goal is to reach the driving speed of130km/h/h.

L4: We are working with Bosch to develop fully automatic unmanned parking function, and in 2022, we won the world's first L4-class self-driving commercial license. This part of the information is relatively small, almost a vision.

To sum up, Mercedes-Benz always believes that all-round safe travel is always the premise of autonomous driving innovation.

Some people think that traditional car companies are "hard to turn over", which has some truth, but the fact is: if our home is a traditional Zibo barbecue, a century-old signboard will definitely sell well. I know that everyone may like to add some new flavors in the future, but I must first ensure that my mutton kebabs are delicious and safe.

Dude, it's not that I don't have the strength to develop new products, but the first thing I want to ensure is that my century-old brand has a firm foothold at all levels.

Although the front is a joke, to be honest-at least on the level of autonomous driving, Mercedes-Benz thinks more clearly than electrification. Because in terms of electrification, Mercedes-Benz needs to know that people may gradually dislike barbecue, because hot pot or Sichuan food is also good.

This Shandong experience is divided into two parts.

The first one is the journey from Jinan to Zibo. We have the L2-level assisted driving experience of ACC+LCC+LCA when driving EQS SUV.

I used to drive this car to shoot the appearance at the intersection of Sanya and Inner Mongolia, but it was really the first time to experience assisted driving.

The province has summarized three advantages and three disadvantages for your reference.

Advantages:

Decisive and comfortable lane change, with certain game ability, and acceleration and deceleration logic before and after lane change; Hands-free monitoring of capacitive steering wheel and convenient activation and cancellation of navigation function; On-ramp and short-term wireless intersection have strong stability. Disadvantages:

On the interactive level, it can't meet our demand for millions of luxury cars, such as active and passive reminders of sound and painting; On the logical level, it may be because there is not enough data that many actual scenarios are still not optimized. For example, the driver actively turned on the turn signal to request lane change while driving, and the vehicle failed to change lanes because there was a parking space in the next lane. At this time, the driver actively turns off the turn signal again, and the vehicle will still maintain the previous lane change operation after passing a certain parking space, so there is no system exit logic.

The third thought for a long time, but I can't remember it for the time being. If you want to say sorry, it is the regret of the navigation-assisted driving system. This will not be expanded. And the second experience, naturally, is the L3 measurement that everyone saw in other media friends.

Earlier, Mercedes-Benz announced that on May 17, it would be the first to launch an S-class sedan and a brand-new EQS equipped with DRIVE Pilot driving and pilot assistance system in the German market.

Vehicles equipped with DRIVE PILOT driving and navigation system allow drivers to start L3 conditional automatic driving mode at the maximum speed of 60km/min on German highway sections with appropriate width during rush hours or congestion periods.

It can be said that although the use conditions of L3 autonomous driving are extremely harsh at present, there are also higher requirements for vehicles. However, we can still have a general understanding of the ability of autonomous driving in the future from specific scenes.

In this experience, it is the first time for us to experience Mercedes-Benz S with lidar. In order to have a complete set of DRIVE PILOT driving and navigation system capabilities, Mercedes-Benz has equipped vehicles with more than 30 sensors such as laser radar, ultrasonic radar, millimeter wave radar, binocular camera, driver camera, antenna array and road humidity monitoring.

In the challenges of emergency traffic jam avoidance, rear special vehicles avoidance, triangle warning signs of faulty vehicles emergency obstacle avoidance, bad vehicles invading the driveway, radar fault redundancy challenge, vehicle-to-X traffic control information and so on, I recorded the video myself and need to share it with you intuitively. However, due to the schedule conflict, we didn't take part in the filming together. I recorded on the vertical screen, so I will release a wonderful clip in Weibo, the director of the same name @ Tram.

Here again, three advantages and two disadvantages of the summary class are given:

Advantages:

Mercedes-Benz has prepared flagship models for its autonomous driving layout, including S-class gasoline vehicles and electric vehicles EQS. Mercedes-Benz equipped with laser radar is a rare thing in mass production cars, especially the layout of the self-driving sign light ADS prompt light is also done in front. By 2026, the requirements of domestic ADS will be fully implemented, and now the chromaticity range is marked. Calibrate the rear view camera of the vehicle and innovatively adopt the rear special vehicle identification. For example, if a police car/ambulance comes behind, the on-board system will give a prompt and ask the driver to avoid it. Although there is no difficulty in terms of technology or operation, Mercedes-Benz's insight into human nature and the concept of life first are commendable. Avoid traffic jams, avoid bad cars on the side, and triangular warning signs are all routine operations. No blowing, no black, legally allowed to let go of L3 level. Although it is a routine operation, it still needs a lot of actual measurement and verification when the driver looks at the mobile phone or even operates the central control panel. Mercedes-Benz didn't lose points. Disadvantages:

Experience fractional kilometers of different subjects, lack of consistency. But it is understandable, because it simulates various situations under moderate congestion and combines the process that needs to be explained. Most of the scenes can be handled by domestic mainstream car companies at present. So what we can see is that at the level of intelligent driving, there may not be any company really ahead. Especially for L3 gear, due to legal restrictions, we can't make too many horizontal comparisons. What grade? To sum up rationally, the experience of Mercedes-Benz L3 at this stage conforms to its own positioning and phased legal requirements: from passive safety to active safety, the overall safety concept; Adhere to "man-machine cooperation, safety first", that is, the system provides support for drivers in the form of cooperative driving mode; Overall safety, reliability, comfort and convenience.

Emotionally speaking, except for some people who agree, most people are still in the state of "I will never give the steering wheel to the machine" when talking about autonomous driving.

To be responsible, although commercial products and brand behaviors are all aimed at profit, the best way to develop and improve science and technology is to promote the commercialization of the market, including the cultivation of talents and the promotion of laws and regulations. The prospect of scientific and technological development is naturally to serve the safety, enjoyment and civilization of mankind.

Looking forward to, the future is on the road, and safety must of course come first.

* Three-level conditional driving, according to GB/T? 40429-202 1 Recommended national standard for automobile driving automation classification

This article comes from the author's electric laboratory of Yichehao, and the copyright belongs to the author. Please contact the author if reproduced in any form. The content only represents the author's point of view and has nothing to do with the car reform.