Watching A Man Behind The Wheel Of The First Self-Driving Truck Will Make Your Hands Sweat
It's the self-driving truck of the future from Daimler, and at the present moment, one prototype exists. It was demonstrated Thursday in Germany, The New York Times Reports. The truck is "capable of responding to traffic while driving completely autonomously down a freeway at speeds of up to 85 kilometers per hour, or 52 miles per hour."
But this is different than Google's self-driving car. In fact, the steering wheel remains an integral part of the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025.
Unlike the pod-shape, two-seat driverless vehicle introduced recently by Google, the Daimler truck retains a steering wheel as a safety measure. This allows a driver to intervene for critical maneuvers, like overtaking a slower-moving vehicle in the left lane, much in the same way as the pilot of an airliner can intervene to guide an aircraft set on autopilot. The Google car is focused on urban transport and specializes in traveling short distances on demand for individual passengers.
It has not been priced yet.
You can read the full report from the Times here, and watch the video of a demonstration of the truck below: