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Of course, star drivers say Mopf, the facelift of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class can still be controlled by hand in the best case scenario. But when the now four-year-old generation “S” rolls onto the road in the fall with the fresh facelift, not only will new in-line sixes grumble under the long hood, the assistants have also been brought up to speed. For my-auto-blog I was able to get a first impression of the skills of the hard-working little helpers.
S is always better
Facelift especially for the assistance systems of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class
Of course, the flagship of the Stuttgart company has to drive ahead, especially in the areas of “safety” and “driving comfort”. But since the E-Class came out last year, it was no longer the “Proud S” with the hottest package of features and assistants, it was the “Business E”. This will soon be over. According to Mopf, the new S-Class is not only able to navigate with new maps from partner HERE, but also in the combination of “active” adaptive cruise control, “active” steering assistant, “active” lane change assistant and The “active” emergency stop assistant is able to achieve a whole new level of autonomy known as Level II. No, Mercedes-Benz is still not talking about an autopilot. But probably from a completely new cooperation between the S-Class and the driver. Yes, the driver is always “responsible”, but the S-Class does what is technically possible to maximize safety and comfort.
Man thinks, cruise control brakes
In everyday life, the new comfort can be used particularly well when traveling overland. With active cruise control, the S-Class not only recognizes the speed limits and automatically brakes to the permitted speed, thanks to the new map data, the S-Class now also knows intersections, roundabouts and curves. In cooperation with active navigation, this leads to the following event: The driver's feet are off the gas, the S-Class purrs over the country at 100 km / h - (How fine the new six-row diesel purrs, I really can not write now ...) - and the navigation system gives the instruction to turn the next intersection to the right. A symbolized turn indicator appears in the instrument cluster, which is a nasty name for the TFT landscape in front of the driver's nose. It could also be a symbol for an intersection or a roundabout, the S-Class then slows down its pace, the driver sets the turn signal and the S-Class is steered by the driver at a suitable speed. The steering assistant does not take over the turning maneuver, the driver has to do it himself, but together with the steering assistant and the active cruise control, the driver and S-Class work together as a team.
The fact that the steering assistant is able to master the majority of curves almost alone when driving over country is something that shouldn't be written too often, as the temptation to hand over the work entirely to the S-Class is probably too great. The warning threshold for the “hands-off” warning message has now dropped again. Until there are steering wheels with capacitive sensors, drivers will have to give the steering wheel a pulse from time to time. Or the legislature will finally take action and open up to new regulations regarding the possible degrees of freedom in “semi-autonomous” driving. There is still a long way to go before the S-Class is allowed to drive on its own - it could probably already do so very well.
While with the E-Class it was already possible to change lanes in the vehicle's hands, but had to keep the turn signal activated, the S-Class will reach the next level. A simple “touch flash” is enough to inform the vehicle that you want to change lanes. If it is safe to overtake (change lanes), the S-Class flashes and carries out the process in a controlled manner. With the new generation, the vehicle now remembers the lane change request for “up to 10 seconds”. If the lane is still occupied, up to 10 seconds can pass until the S-Class finds the appropriate gap, then flashes itself and ends the lane change.
30-second break in Stop & Go
The scope of the traffic jam assistant has also been expanded. With the coming generation, the traffic jam assistant will be an almost indispensable extra of these days: being able to pause for up to 30 seconds at a standstill in order to start alone when traffic flows again.
The rest remain S-class
The test vehicle I drove shows how successful the S-Class was and is when it comes to design. The visual changes for the coming generation are limited. New LED headlights with an “ultra high beam”, even more LED points for even more flexible lighting and a new steering wheel in the interior. It probably didn’t take much to make the S-Class “fresh” – understandable.