2017 Mercedes E-Class Testing, Drive, Chassis, Safety, MULTIBEAM LED, Design – Video

 

Mercedes-Benz is so fanatical about branding individual in-car features, it’s easy to miss the bigger picture. Take the new E-class, which christens its technologies with a jumble of cryptic phrases such as Distance Pilot Distronic, Air Body Control, and Pre-Safe Impulse. But taken together and distilled to a single theme, the E’s safety, connectivity, and semi-autonomous technologies make for a concise story. The E-class is a smart car, indeed, much more so than the Smart, the twee city cart that’s also built by Daimler.

 

 

This new E is a car for an age of smart devices, one in which fridges alert you to milk gone bad and toilets text you when they need cleaning. Seven years ago, Mercedes launched Attention Assist, an algorithm that monitored steering inputs and other parameters to detect a drowsy driver. While that feature, denoted in the cluster by an icon of a steaming cup of joe, again is present in this new E-class, it’s practically obviated by Benz’s new Drive Pilot technology, which could just as easily be called “Inattention Assist.”