Mercedes-Benz Beat Tesla to Level 3 Self-Driving. Here’s What It’s Like

We tried the new Drive Pilot option in an EQS sedan. Spoiler alert: It was wild.

Published September 27, 2023

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Updated October 3, 2023

“I hope we hit traffic,” Mercedes-Benz’s autonomous driving engineer quips as we depart from Santa Monica, California.

Not a oft-heard statement, but, for today’s purposes, an apt one. The goal of Mercedes-Benz’s newly (and provisionally) allowed self-driving suite — Level 3, for the initiated — is to find all the traffic jams. The Three-Pointed Star brand recently bested Tesla in achieving Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Level 3, wherein your self-driving-equipped S-Class or EQS sedan will pilot itself in dense traffic up to 40 miles per hour.

Soon enough, on Los Angeles’s Interstate 10 freeway, we encounter a wall of vehicles creeping along. A button on our 2023 EQS sedan’s steering wheel alights in a calming turquoise hue, indicating that autonomy is available. I tap it and, within seconds, the vehicle engages its self-driving suite and I’m free to remove my hands and eyes — my gaze is being measured by dashboard-mounted cameras — from the road.

In this level of automated driving, the Mercedes handles all accelerating and braking, as well as steering. A host of media apps are unlocked, too, among them an air-hockey-style game; YouTube and others options are available, too. The engineer — riding shotgun for insurance purposes — and I duel on the middle screen; I’m able to score a few points before traffic eases and the autopilot system recognizes this, disengaging, abruptly ending our contest. All car controls revert to me, for the time being.

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What does Level 3 self-driving mean?

A quick primer on the various SAE levels: Level 2 means your vehicle is able to follow the car in front of you, with partial automation. Your vehicle can do things like gauge the distance to the lead vehicle, determine lane markings and stay within them … and that’s about it. You, the driver, must be engaged and focused on the road, ready to step in at any given moment. Level 3 affords conditional automation, allowing you to engage in inside activities while on the highway, while Level 4 increases the amount of inattention you’re afforded, and Level 5 — the dream — is where you hop in and tell your car where to head and you don’t even have to be in the driver’s seat.

Mercedes has operated vehicles with SAE Level 2 systems (as have Tesla, General Motors and Ford, among other carmakers) for a while, with more than 40 automation functions available in many Mercs — things like active steering assist, active blind spot assist and active brake assist have been employed across the nation. The newest offering, automatic lane change, just debuted on the E-Class, and it’s pretty helpful.

gm super cruise — GM’s Super Cruise is an example of an advanced Level 2 system. You can take your hands off the wheels, but you better not take your eyes off the road.

But with Level 2, your hands must remain on the wheel and your eyes locked on the road, lest the system detects otherwise and automatically disengages. Now, on select California and Nevada highways, Merc’s been cleared to step up to Level 3, beating Elon Musk’s Teslas and their claims of “Full Self-Driving”. Within Mercedes’s home base of Germany, Level 3 has been approved for more than a year, with hundreds of vehicles employing the technology. Zero accidents have been reported. The goal is to help you maximize your time stuck in otherwise cumbersome traffic; Germany even affords the ability to use your mobile device in this mode.

How did Mercedes get there first?

Operational design domain and a multitude of technological redundancies. The first bit refers to the habitat and circumstances in which Drive Pilot is allowed to engage: there must be a traffic jam on the highway, you can only go up to 40 mph, good road conditions with markings must exist, the weather must be decent (no snow or rain) and it must be daytime, and the car’s high-definition map system must be active. (Equally, the driver must meet a set of conditions for Drive Pilot’s Level 3: you can’t recline your seat, doze off or wear headphones.)

As for the technological safety nets, the steering and braking systems have a backup motor and computer processors; there’s an entire second electrical system ready in the wings. An array of additional sensors dot the exterior, including a wheel-mounted microphone that can recognize water spray over the tires and determine the road surface is too wet. LIDAR sensors work in tandem with radar and stereo camera systems. Why the overkill? To compensate and address each individual component’s weaknesses.

mercedes drive pilot — A guide to the sensors that enables Level 3 self-driving.

With more than 100,000 miles of testing completed on California and Nevada roads — all of that in heavy traffic, mind you — the system works quite well during our test drive. Perhaps you’ve tried lane keeping assist on an equipped vehicle and had slight pangs of panic as the car drifts to the outside of the lane during a curve; with Level 3, there’s no such worries, as the EQS knows it’s precise position down to the centimeter. Accordingly, I’ve never experienced a car that keeps itself so centered within the lane. A turquoise box pops onto the heads-up display, and you can see how surgically the car’s able to orient itself in any inch of road.

Engineers spent years imbuing the Drive Pilot with the prescience to handle the host of daily driving surprises that we all encounter. In California, where motorcycles are allowed to lane-split, Drive Pilot will recognize this and shift over a little within its lane, to give the bike a wide berth. Likewise, the rear stereo cameras can discern the difference between high beams flashing and the colored lights of a police car or ambulance, the latter of which initiates a handover to the driver for the utmost safety. If the forward-facing cameras detect a bike or pedestrian (an oddity on the side of the highway), it likewise disengages.

Turquoise lights on the exterior also activate when Drive Pilot is enabled, in order to notify other drivers that the car is in control.

The first vehicles with Drive Pilot will be hitting the road at the end of this year. There’s no extra cost to have the hardware included in your EQS sedan or S-Class, though there’s a software subscription fee of $2,500 for the first year, with Mercedes reps noting future cost options are forthcoming. That may seem a mite steep, but as you creep along the worst highway traffic, having your back gently kneaded by a hot massaging seat as you tuck into some inane video on YouTube, with supreme confidence in your car’s ability to handle itself for the foreseeable rest of the bottleneck … you’ll probably find it’s worth every cent.

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