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S-Class Drives Completely Autonomously Bertha Benz's Memorial Route

In August 1888, Bertha Benz – the wife of Carl Benz - and her two sons completed the world's first long distance drive (104 km/65 miles) in the Benz Patent Motorwagen – arguably the first modern automobile in the world.
Mercedes-Benz s 500 Intelligent Drive 7 photos
Photo: Daimler AG
Mercedes-Benz S 500 Intelligent DriveMercedes-Benz S 500 Intelligent DriveMercedes-Benz S 500 Intelligent DriveMercedes-Benz S 500 Intelligent DriveMercedes-Benz S 500 Intelligent DriveMercedes-Benz S 500 Intelligent Drive
Exactly 125 years later, the Mercedes-Benz S 500 Intelligent Drive prototype drove in the tracks of Bertha completely without any driver input, becoming the second S-Class in history to deal autonomously with a number of highly complex driving situations on a long distance drive.

Unfortunately, current Mercedes-Benz PR managers don't know a great deal about their own company's history, since they state in the official press release that the W222 S-Class is their first car to complete such a feat.

May we remind them and our users that the first car to be driven autonomously over a longer distance in both city and and highway traffic was the W140 S-Class robot car, made in collaboration between then-Daimler Benz and Prof. Ernst Dieter Dickmanns, part of the EUREKA Prometheus Project. We will write a more in-depth about the latter in the following days.

Nevertheless, the video bellow depicts a much better developed vehicle, while the technology on board is near-production and based on existing sensors already available on the current E-Class W212 and the S-Class W222.

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About the author: Alex Oagana
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Alex handled his first real steering wheel at the age of five (on a field) and started practicing "Scandinavian Flicks" at 14 (on non-public gravel roads). Following his time at the University of Journalism, he landed his first real job at the local franchise of Top Gear magazine a few years before Mircea (Panait). Not long after, Alex entered the New Media realm with the autoevolution.com project.
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