And a horse could do it centuries before that, but that's not a fair comparison either.

The car in that video had so much extra custom stuff it's not even funny. And while it's still a technical feat, I don't see every mercedes being sold with that equipment in it already.

The reason this is amazing is because Tesla is planning on switching this on for all of their new cars in the very near future. It might not be the most technically advanced, but it's here.

It's just like how Mercedes (and others) have shown some fantastic "Tesla killer" electric vehicle concepts. That's nice, but it's not really something that competes with Tesla until it's available to buy.

While the others make promises, Tesla's making cars.

The equipment is available in the current S-Class and the most current E-Class, when we talk about the sensors and the actuators. It is different with actual ECU who does the computing stuff.

BTW I doubt that the Tesla is ASIL D complient in this sense. AFAIK their is no ASIL D implemented component right now. Everybody avoids that. But this is required to be fail safe.

Where is all that extra custom stuff? Because the car looks perfectly normal, no Google-esque radar dome on top.

Very cool video. Said Daimler was using 8 radars and three cameras, so sort of the inverse of the Tesla approach.

The Tesla video is a bit more exciting, because it is using a car that consumers are already driving, whereas the Mercedes has "aftermarket" sensors and a computing platform built in. Mercedes is impressive on the other hand, because that was three years ago.

A DLR/TU Braunschweig cooperation was able to drive through light traffic 6 years ago:

https://youtu.be/BrmorE5W1tM

Having a working implementation in a consumer grade car is impressive, but the ability itself is not novel.

Actually, you can buy the car too. I have been driven in a S-class about 3 years ago that had the same capabilties the Tesla here has.

It's been known for a while that many of the other semi-autonomous platforms are out probably a little early compared to Tesla's and feel a bit dangerous. It's likely their fully autonomous platforms are similarly not as ready to go.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/semi-autonomous-cars-co...

That's more a bunch of edits than an end-to-end demo.

I did not invested the time to search for that version and I doubt it exists.

But the video does not have Benny Hill ;-) (Just kidding)

Are you implying timelapse format is intentional?

And it has a proper emergency stop button!

I'm curious what that button does? Does it go full "emergency brake" mode and stop the car ASAP, or does it give control back to the driver?

I could see the former being useful during development, but I wouldn't want a "slam on the brakes" button in my car. And the latter could be much more easily worked out by just switching under any driver input on the steering wheel.

I work in the automotive industry for a manufacturer. All of our prototypes have big emergency stop buttons in the center console using 3D printed adapters to slot into the cup holders.

They just kill the engine and disconnect the battery. It's a legal requirement. Nothing fancy.

So if you are at speed, the car starts engine-braking (with no proper brake force distribution between front and rear wheels), and the power steering isn't working, right?