The idea of zero road deaths sounds like a pipe dream. But Mercedes-Benz says an uncrashable car is possible.
That's the opinion Mercedes-Benz global R&D chief, Ola Kalennius, who is excited about his new ESF (formerly ESV), or Experimental Safety Vehicle.
Companies like Volvo have been talking up the idea of zero deaths for years – once claiming it would reach this milestone in 2020. Now, Mercedes-Benz is readying its safest vehicle ever – a car that is intended to make the road toll a distant memory.
"Safety is the core DNA of Mercedes and the ultimate goal is zero accidents in traffic," said Ola Kalennius, the bloke in charge of research and development at Mercedes-Benz cars.
In an interview with Australian media at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show, where autonomous and even flying cars were in abundance, Kalennius confirmed that a new ESF would be revealed mid-2019.
What will it showcase?
"Wait and see!" was Kalennius' initial response, but improvements in autonomous driving tech and collision prevention are expected, as are new occupant protection systems designed to reduce injury in the advent of a car crash.
"Things like autonomous driving and sophisticated driver assistance are all enablers to reduce traffic accidents. Because virtually all traffic accidents are human error," he said.
The idea is that if cars are controlled by constantly-learning AI and a huge amount of cloud computing brawn that can see all things at all times, no one should die while riding inside a car.
Although the Mercedes exec wouldn’t be drawn on whether the new ESF will again be based on the S-Class flagship limousine (the last ESF was launched in 2009) or how it makes human drivers safer, Kalennius said the new concept car will be a jaw dropper.
He suggested many of its safety features are almost showroom ready.
"Having been in engineering for a couple of years, I'm absolutely amazed at the ingenuity and creativity of the engineers. It never stops. We will do something in the middle of this year, to demonstrate what the future of safety is going to look like.
"I don’t want to say what the features are [but] there are some things that are very hands on and very close to series deployment."
When the conversation shifted to autonomous cars and when we an specifically expect to see a vehicle that requires either no steering wheel or no awareness from the driver whatsoever, Kalennius parried, but he did say it'll happen first in cities.
"So one day I'm sure we will have the individual robot driver," he said.
"If you talk about full level four or level five capability, the first business case for that is a mobility service in an area which is dense with a critical mass, naturally a city.
"How quickly you can then scale that [up] and getting the costs of the systems down [is the challenge]."
"I don’t want to put an exact date on it, but if you walk around this show here, you can see there are a lot of players, us included, that are putting a lot of resources and thinking into solving this problem.
"It's a very difficult problem to solve because of the level of safety you have to achieve. But we're on the way towards it."
What do you think – is the Mercedes R&D chief just invoking PR spin or can the driverless car achieve zero road deaths in our lifetime? Have your say in the comments below.