The threshold for assisted driving towards autonomous driving may not be technological iteration, but the division of responsibilities.
From the perspective of the industry, if the driver bears the responsibility for the accident, then the system belongs to the auxiliary driving, and if the car company bears the responsibility for the accident, then the system is the level of automatic driving.
However, car companies need better technical reserves to bear the responsibility for accidents (car companies default that my system will not have bugs), which leads to the fact that there is no real autonomous vehicle model in the industry.
Recently, the veteran car company Mercedes-Benz has made a decision that other car companies dare not make: if a user uses the Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot automatic driving system in an accident, Mercedes-Benz is fully responsible.
This means that Mercedes-Benz will be the first car manufacturer to introduce an autonomous driving system for users.
It can be seen that the old big factories are more responsible, and the new forces that have been clamoring for many years are still at the younger brother level.
But why did Mercedes-Benz dare to put such harsh words as soon as it came up? What is the origin of its Drive Pilot autonomous driving system? How capable.
First, the Mercedes-Benz mass production car equipped with Drive Pilot has opened a small range of push and evaluation, and the official table is set as the L3 automatic driving system. And the system has also become recognized by the European Economic Commission as the first and only L3 level autonomous driving system, surpassing Tesla.
The key to getting Mercedes-Benz and official European organizations to truly recognize the L3 level is two main aspects:
The first is the ownership of the control (the vehicle is solely responsible).
Drive Pilot allows drivers to free their hands while not requiring the driver to concentrate, and in the world's major autonomous driving level standards, the complete takeover of the vehicle by the autonomous driving system is one of the necessary conditions for dividing assisted driving and L3 and above autonomous driving.
The second is the attribution of rights and responsibilities (the responsibility of the car company).
There is no unified and clear legal boundary on the ownership of accident rights and responsibilities for automatic driving, but the industry generally believes that the main responsibility for L2 assisted driving should belong to individuals, and the main body responsible for L3 and above automatic driving is borne by enterprises.
For example, in China, all high-level autonomous driving test projects, as long as there is an accident, the company needs to bear full responsibility.
From these two points of view, Mercedes-Benz's Drive Pilot does meet the L3 level automatic driving standard.
However, it should be noted that the Drive Pilot automatic driving system is still a conditional automatic driving.
Mercedes-Benz gave a series of conditions, such as: speeds above 40 mph (60 km / h) can not be driven, without high-precision map coverage can not be opened, bad weather conditions (such as rain and snow weather) can not be driven, etc.
Carefully calculated, it seems that it can only solve the automatic driving of high-speed or expressway congestion.
In addition, the system is currently only installed on Mercedes-Benz's latest luxury pure electric sedan EQS, priced at 1 million to 1.5 million.
The high price means that the model is destined to become a tool for only a few people, which is also one of the main reasons why Mercedes-Benz dares to be responsible.
summary:
In any case, Mercedes-Benz's L3 level automatic driving system is indeed worthy of its name. Moreover, this is also the first passenger car L3-level mass production automatic driving system recognized by the main engine factory and the official of all the OEMs in the world, from this level, Mercedes-Benz does have the courage to do what all players around the world dare not do.