Taking a test drive in the 2030 Mercedes-Benz Self Driving Car

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Both Silicon Valley and Detroit are ablaze with Autonomous driving vehicle fever. From Google, to Audi to Mercedes, everyone is trying to be first off the block to offer the first truly self driving car.  At this stage in the game the issue seems to be less about the technology and more about the regulation. Who is responsible in the case of an accident, is it the owner of the vehicle, the car manufacturer or the company providing the underlying technology, These are some of the issues that will have to be addressed before self driving cars become a wide-spread reality. Nevertheless the the The Verge was able to test drive the totally futuristic Mercedes Benz F 015 on n abandoned airfield.

The gleaming silver spheroid resting before me on the tarmac has a pleasant, female voice. It’s friendly, almost conversational, were it not for the monotonous whirring of a strange motor in the background.

“Please, go ahead,” it says again. It’s telling me that it’s safe to cross in front of it, I believe, so I can get in on the other side. There is no sense of urgency or impatience. This machine isn’t subject to emotion, to the frightening cocktail of testosterone and adrenaline that beget the tragically human phenomenon of road rage.

, a distant-future vision of what a fully autonomous car could eventually look like. We’re standing with a group of other journalists at one end of a dilapidated runway at the Alameda Naval Air Station, a vast expanse of concrete and weeds that has remained essentially unchanged since the military base’s closure in 1997. Enormous transoceanic freighters glide by in the channel a few hundred feet to the north, backdropped by the hazy silhouette of San Francisco’s skyline several miles away.

is known to film here, because you can have an explosion or a crash go horribly wrong and it doesn’t really matter. It’s basically a scene from

Before the F 015 has a chance to ask me once again, I dart in front of it. I don’t know what an autonomous car sounds like when it gets frustrated with a pedestrian, but I don’t care to find out.

quoted from Riding in the Mercedes-Benz F 015