Mercedes Becomes First U.S. Car Company to Achieve Level 3 Autonomous Driving Certification

At CES in Jan­u­ary, Mer­cedes announced it would become the first auto­mo­tive com­pa­ny to receive SAE cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for Lev­el 3 dri­ver assis­tance sys­tems. Thurs­day it was offi­cial­ly announced.

Con­firm­ing that Dri­vePi­lot’s ADAS (Auto­mat­ic Dri­ver Assis­tance Sys­tems) meet the require­ments of Neva­da Chap­ter 482A, which reg­u­lates the use of autonomous vehi­cle tech­nol­o­gy on Neva­da roads, the com­pa­ny for­mal­ly announced Thursday.

This makes Dri­vePi­lot the only Lev­el 3 legal sys­tem in the Unit­ed States at this time.

“Our unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to inno­va­tion has guid­ed Mer­cedes-Benz from the begin­ning,” said MBUSA pres­i­dent and CEO Dim­itris Psi­lakis in a press release on Thursday.

“Con­tin­u­ing this lead­er­ship and cel­e­brat­ing this mile­stone achieve­ment as the first auto­mo­tive com­pa­ny to receive Lev­el 3 Con­di­tion­al Auton­o­my cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the U.S. mar­ket is a moment of great pride for all of us.” increase.

Lev­el 3 capa­bil­i­ties, as defined by NHTSA (Nation­al High­way Traf­fic Safe­ty Admin­is­tra­tion), allow the vehi­cle to han­dle “every aspect of dri­ving” when con­nect­ed, but still give the dri­ver quick con­trol when needed.

Atten­tion is required. It’s a big step up from the Lev­el 2 sys­tems we see today, such as Tes­la’s “ful­ly self-dri­ving,” Ford’s “Blue Cruise,” and GM’s “Super Cruise.”

All of this, in short, means that the dri­ver must keep his or her atten­tion on the wheel and usu­al­ly keep his hands on the steer­ing wheel, or at least near it, while tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for what the ADAS are doing is the after­math of road-adap­tive cruise control.

This is a far cry from the Knight Rid­er vision of ADAS Tes­la is tout­ing, and the true pow­er of Lev­el 2 Autonomy.

Mer­cedes’ Dri­vePi­lot says it can take over the task of dri­ving at 40km/h with­out the dri­ver tak­ing his hands off the wheel “in the right sec­tions of the high­way or in areas of high traf­fic density”.

When acti­vat­ed, the sys­tem can keep lane, fol­low traf­fic flow, nav­i­gate to the des­ti­na­tion pro­grammed in the nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem, and even respond to “unex­pect­ed traf­fic con­di­tions, such as eva­sive maneu­vers and brak­ing in the lane. It becomes pos­si­ble to man­age autonomous­ly by

Dri­ve Pilot mon­i­tors the approach of emer­gency vehi­cles using sen­sors embed­ded through­out the vehi­cle, includ­ing visu­al cam­eras, LiDAR arrays, radar, ultra­son­ic sen­sors and audio microphones.

In addi­tion, it is pos­si­ble to accu­rate­ly deter­mine the posi­tion on the road by com­par­ing the data from the on-board sen­sor and the data received from the GPS.

Dri­ve Pilot is only avail­able on the 2024 S‑Class and EQS saloons for now. Pro­duc­tion has already begun, and the first vehi­cles are expect­ed to arrive in Las Vegas lat­er this year.