Did You See the Driverless Future Mercedes in SF?

Did You See the Driverless Future Mercedes in SF?

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On Thursday morning, a veritable car from the future was spotted zipping around San Francisco. The sleek auto prompted a flurry of Tweets, Instagrams, and Reddit chat, with everyone asking what's up. Turns out Mercedes-Benz was behind the brouhaha. It was all part of the luxury brand's F015 self-driving car concept.


Here are a few images locals snapped of the futuristic car in action:

spotted @nickkova

A photo posted by Jake Stangel (@jakestangel) on

But why was it cruising the streets of San Francisco? Wired has one theory:

"The most likely explanation for the jaunt around the Bay Area is that Mercedes-Benz is filming some sort of promotional video about, or at least including, the F015. What’s unclear is whether there’s a human hidden behind those windows, and if not, how the car senses the world around it. It’s free of the spinning LIDAR system used on many self-driving cars, and there are no visible cameras or radars. It’s also missing things like side-view mirrors that are mandated by federal regulations, so our guess is that it’s not a legitimate, government-sanctioned test vehicle, but something closer to a film prop. Not that there’s anything wrong with that."

The F015 comes with spinning seats (for when the "driver" wants to talk to passengers) and LED illumination; it can sense pedestrians, has no side-view mirrors, and can even project a crosswalk on the ground. Just don't expect to buy one of these beauties for quite some time. Release of the F015 isn't expected for at least two decades. 

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