We’ve known for some time now that the cars of the future would not, in fact, fly hundreds of feet above the ground on some sort of airway like in “Back to the Future,” but rather would be autonomous, driving themselves and giving drivers more of a sense of safety and ease than they’ve ever known in an automobile.
Mercedes-Benz continues to be at the forefront of the autonomous driving revolution, something that recently was reinforced by the fact that the automaker was granted the world’s first standard-production autonomous driving license in the state of Nevada. What that means is that the three new Mercedes-Benz E-Class vehicles blessed with a full array of autonomous driving hardware and software will be given the opportunity to really and truly test their abilities on Nevada roads.
This is massively significant not only because Mercedes-Benz is the first one to the punch on this but also because it means they’ve officially developed self-driving vehicles that are safe enough to be allowed to roam free on actual U.S. roads. A human driver will be in the vehicle to get the trips started, make turns and merge into traffic, but otherwise these vehicles will be driving themselves. Hopefully these tests help make the technology even better and that eventually we’ll be given the opportunity to own an autonomous Mercedes-Benz in Florida.
For now, though, Nevada is where these tests are going to
take place, and we’re excited about what these mean for the future of driving.
Flying cars would have been cool, but self-driving vehicles incapable of
getting into accidents are pretty cool, too. Either way, it looks like science
fiction writers are going to have to recalibrate their driving predictions
moving forward!
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