- I'm standing in the middle of
Las Vegas Boulevard right now.
(upbeat music)
What's up guys, welcome
to the strip of Las Vegas.
It is currently 3:30 in the morning.
I am here because of this car,
that is rolling past me right now.
This is the Smart Vision EQ for Two.
This is what the future
looks like, literally.
This is a car, that's a concept car,
that's suppose to be out
sometime in 2025 to 2030.
And a lot of times what
these car companies do,
is they come out with their
vision, and they make something
that shows what the future
is going to look like,
and that's what this car is.
So today, Mercedes gave me and
my friends, Zach and Jared,
an opportunity to come out here,
in the middle of the night.
They literally shut down the strip.
The police are here.
They've barricaded up the road,
and we get to go on a ride
in this car, and we're
gonna bring you guys along,
and show you a little bit of
what the future looks like
when it comes to autonomous driving.
Alright, good news, we got
our friend Wolfgang with us.
If you remember, from Portugal.
- Hi.
- You are the one that showed
us everything about the
concept EQ car, that was really cool.
He's the one who brought us up here.
Thank you, Wolfgang.
- You're welcome.
(electronic music)
- Tell us a little bit about this.
You can do a lot of the electric car,
which is the EQ line.
- Exactly, this is also kind of an EQ car.
It's a vision EQ four two.
I'm not the main
responsible person for it,
but I can tell you it's
also an electric car.
This time, for the autonomous,
it doesn't have a steering
wheel, and it has great other
features, which you can learn later on.
Currently, if you have
assisted driving systems,
it's level two up to level three, a bit,
so we're pushing for level three
in the next car generation.
This car should be a level
four, even a level five.
So this means fully
autonomous, no driver in there,
no steering wheel.
- We posted a video recently,
on or drive down here to CVS,
and our Tesla has autopilot version two.
They call it autopilot,
I think Mercedes does
probably a better job at
saying assisted driving,
where instead of calling
it full on autopilot,
because really, you need to pay attention.
It's helping you on the lanes,
but you want to pay attention
because it's definitely
not going to protect you from everything.
Okay, so I'm seeing a few
things on the smart car.
It has all of this, it has the headlights.
This is Ari, and she works on
the team that developed this
Smart Vision EQ for two.
What's going on with these lights?
It has lighting on the doors,
it has lighting on the eyes that blink up.
- So, the headlights are
suppose to communicate with you.
It's a shared car, it comes
to your home and picks you up.
You don't own it,
but it looks very human
when it picks up you,
it blinks at you, and it just says, "Hi."
And the front bill shows your profile.
So it's suppose to show
that technology is friendly,
and an autonomous car can be friendly,
so you don't have to be afraid,
and it makes you feel like you can own it.
- One question, if you're in the car,
what happens if it shuts down,
or it hits, say some dog
runs out in front of us
and we hit it, do we
have control of the door,
or if it looked like there
was something dangerous,
could we actually stop the car?
- Our first vision is, we
have sensors and software that
kind of prevents if from hitting anything,
and second thing is,
there must be some kind
of fleet management.
- [Ari] By your mobile device you can
still control the doors.
- [Host] You can still control
the doors with your phone.
- [Ari] Yeah with your phone.
- [Host] Oh nice.
- Open and close the door with your phone.
- It's time for me to try what level five
autonomous driving would be like
and what it is like.
This is a Smart Vision EQ For Two.
It's time to make this happen.
And because it's for two I've got to have
Mr. Zach Jerry Rig Everything.
Are you ready, can we fit in this
- Yes, hell yeah let's do it.
(upbeat music)
- All right, it's cozy.
This is it.
Obviously our names are
not David and Kate today,
but if this were the working car
these would be our profiles
and it would be personalized to us.
And so the lighting in here
would be personalized to us.
There will be an arm rest in the middle
so that if it picked up somebody.
Oh here goes the door.
(upbeat music)
Okay that was cool.
All right we're going on
our first ride right now.
This is it, level five dude.
We just chill.
Just hang out, the car takes
us where we want to go.
When it signals it says it all over
the car outside.
I mean imagine, level
five autonomous driving.
You can do whatever you want in this car.
You can sleep, watch a movie, text,
you don't need to pay attention.
To some that may scare them,
but just know by the time
that this is actually
available and it's something
that people could use,
it will be properly vetted
and it should be super safe.
Maybe even safer than
what a bunch of humans do.
On the way to here I rode in a taxi.
We literally almost crashed in 10 minutes.
So level five autonomous driving,
I think I may trust a little bit more.
It's important to know
this is a concept car.
So it's not fully functional right now
the way that it will be working
once it's out at some point.
So I'm sure that the
air will be figured out
it won't be as foggy.
But Zach's a big dude.
He's got some big shoulders.
He works out a lot,
and I'm six foot three.
I'm a pretty big tight guy too.
There's plenty of room in
here for the two of us.
I know it says, "For Two,"
I wonder if we could fit three in here.
Like if we had little Lincoln
in here in the middle.
- Yeah we could do three.
I bet we could do three.
- Look at the way these doors open.
This is the future right here.
This is one of the coolest things
I've seen at CS for sure.
(upbeat music)
There we go.
Okay, so good news I
get to ride on it again.
It is a Smart car For Two.
So I'm bringing my
other buddy that's here.
- Hey, how it's going.
- That's not Jared.
- I kept the seat warm for you.
Hope that's all right.
I feel like they should have a sound like.
(mimicking mechanical sound)
- Like there, there's a sound.
Like a spaceship.
- Yeah.
- Like we're on a spaceship
and the thing just closed the air lock.
- Yeah, the air lock, that's right.
Close the pod bay doors.
And that's the thing, we're experiencing
a little bit of the future right now.
It may not look exactly like this
but it's going to be pretty darn close.
- Which I'll tell you from
the aspect of thinking
about our kid's future,
I'm a little terrified for
when my kids are driving.
Like what if they're distracted drivers.
A lot of kids are distracted drivers.
They need to put their phones down.
Well in this, the car will
come and pick up your kids,
take them to school.
You know that they're going to be safe.
- Sorry we fogged it up
in there a little bit.
- So when it comes to pricing
and availability of this
there's no pricing at this point
of what it might actually
look like in the future.
But again this could be something where
you could see an entire fleet of cars
driving down the street.
That was really cool.
I hoped you guys liked this.
We have more electric cars
and more cool things from CES coming.
I don't know how you top
shutting down the strip
and riding in an autonomous car
down Las Vegas Boulevard.
But we'll see what we can do.
So stay tuned for that.
(upbeat music)
