Mercedes-Benz is bringing Level 3 autonomous vehicles to the U.S. — the first automaker to do so.
While Tesla calls its driver assistance system "Full Self-Driving," with CEO Elon Musk promising, and then failing to deliver, Level 4 or Level 5 autonomy, it is actually Mercedes-Benz that officially achieved the feat of getting a Level 3 car on a U.S. road.
The "Level" figures refer to SAE International's levels of driving automation. Level 2 and below refer to various driver support features, which can perform certain functions such as steer, accelerate, and brake, but the driver must constantly supervise them and intervene as needed.
Level 3, 4, and 5, refer to fully automated driving, but the differences between them are vast. A vehicle that has Level 3 automation can drive itself, but it might require the driver to take over. It only works under limited conditions, and will not operate unless all required conditions are met. Level 4 and Level 5, ideally, should never ask the driver to take over, with the difference being that Level 4 also works under certain limited conditions, whereas Level 5 means the car can drive itself in all conditions.
...if all conditions are met, the driver can take their eyes off the road, and let go of the steering wheel without the car nagging.
Mercedes-Benz's take on Level 3, available through a set of features call Drive Pilot, only works in clear weather, during the day, on some specific freeways in California and Nevada, and only when the car is traveling less than 40 miles per hour. Finally, it's only available in Merc's EQS and S-Class sedans. All of that may not sound terribly exciting, but what makes this different from other, similar systems, is that if all conditions are met, the driver can take their eyes off the road, and let go of the steering wheel without the car nagging. Tesla's Autopilot and FSD systems require the driver to react and take over in all scenarios, meaning they officially fall into the Level 2 category.
Mercedes-Benz announced this system last September, and started selling Level 3-enabled cars in the U.S. in December (the company previously launched the same system in Germany). Now, as Fortune noticed, at least one of those cars has actually been sold to a customer in California.
Mercedes is not alone in this effort, though it is the first to do it in the United States. Last year, BMW announced it would launch a Level 3-enabled car in March 2024, but only in Germany.
Musk recently announced a "Robotaxi" event, scheduled for August 2024. Despite not being able to perfect its FSD system to the point of it being fully autonomous, the Tesla CEO keeps betting on a dream of robotaxis, meaning cars that can autonomously ferry passengers around. Those do exist - for example, Alphabet's Waymo and GM's Cruise have been offering a self-driving taxi service in San Francisco, with mixed results — but Musk seems to want to sell such cars to customers. In order to do so, he'll first have to leap over Mercedes' latest effort; notably, Mercedes's own CTO Markus Schäfer thinks that private-owned Level 4 cars could be a thing "by the end of the decade."
