Today, we’re blasting away the cobwebs of Unexceptionality again with another super-exotic top Mercedes. This is the W196 R ‘Stromlinie’ (streamline) race car from 1954, a type in which Fangio won the French Grand Prix that year. The smooth enclosed bodywork was optimised for circuits with high-speed straights. The most notable technical feature was probably the straight-eight engine. Snapped at #Retromobile in Paris in 2014. #Mercedes#Fangio#Stromlinie#WeirdCarMastodon#davidsdailycar. 1/2
Die meisten Deutschen denken bei chinesischen Autoherstellern nach wie vor zuerst an billige Autos. Das bekommen wir in den zwei Wochen mit dem Nio ET5 gleich mehrfach zu hören. Und wir blicken in viele überraschte Gesichter, wenn wir dann erzählen, dass der ET5 so viel kostet wie ein BMW 5er oder eine Mercedes-Benz E-Klasse.
Unterschiedliche Zukunftsperspektiven für deutsche Autokonzerne
Die deutschen Autobauer sind erfolgreich in das laufende Jahr gestartet. Aber während VW wegen der unsicheren Konjunktur seine Absatzprognose für das zweite Halbjahr senkt, blickt Mercedes optimistischer in die Zukunft.
Tesla-Konkurrenz: Auto-Konsortium plant Lade-Marktführerschaft in USA
Eine Gruppe von Autoherstellern um Mercedes und BMW will in den USA führender Anbieter von Schnelllade-Stationen für Elektroautos werden. Damit will das Konsortium Teslas führende Rolle brechen.
Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car's digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare - but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it's a dream they can't give up on.
Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when #BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?
Not to be outdone, #Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car's accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:
Let's talk about #Mercedes vehicles equipped with #DrivePilot a bit - a Level 3-capable vehicle that has been recently "approved" in a handful of US states.
This article almost entirely focuses on the legal dynamics of consumer liability should this vehicle create a direct (or, presumably, an indirect) incident.
But, as always, I want to talk about what I feel are the #SystemsSafety realities at work here and the many foot-guns that are associated with that.
Distilled from that verbose definition, the image below is how #Mercedes describes the capabilities of their vehicle.
On paper, a strict "vehicle control responsibility" separation seemingly exists.
The Mercedes vehicle drives until "it can't" and then, after a sufficient warning time provided by the vehicle, the human driver regains situational awareness and operational control of the vehicle.
The core issue, again put simply, is that law enforcement is structurally ill-equipped to take full, immediate control of the vehicle and secure a (physical and digital) chain-of-custody when an incident occurs with these vehicles.
That is it.
What will instead happen is that law enforcement, courts, regulators and insurance companies will be at the complete mercy of #Mercedes (in this case) in terms of vehicle data and, most probably, an interpretation of the events.
Now, you, as the human driver are also effectively at the mercy of #Mercedes!
The laws on the books do not matter.
And the considerable "friction" of pursuing an open-ended legal claim against Mercedes' data advantages will always work against you.
The #NTSB, the US's independent transportation safety investigator, foresaw this asymmetric data relationship as far back as 2016 - and, naturally, the US's hapless auto safety regulator, the #NHTSA, simply ignored it.
Wenns ums Auto geht, sind die Deutschen kompromisslos. Gilt das auch für die Daten, welche die Automobilkonzerne über uns und unsere Autos sammeln? Wir wollen mit einer Crowd-Recherche herausfinden, welche Daten gespeichert werden. Hierfür brauchen wir Deine Hilfe!
@netzpolitik_feed
Du fährst 🚘 #BMW, #Tesla, #VW/#Audi, #Mercedes#Benz oder #Opel und Dein Auto ist noch keine drei Jahre alt? Dann solltest Du mitmachen und erfahren, was Dein #Auto so alles über Dich weiß und dem Hersteller weitererzählt hat.
Dann fragt doch einfach mal beim Hersteller nach, was der so alles über euch, euer #Auto und euer Fahrverhalten gespeichert habt. Und wenn ihr mögt, könnt ihr dann großartigen #Journalismus damit unterstützen!
@brunty flashbacks to last season when #Kmag got penalized every other race for loose bits on his car while #Mercedes and #RedBull cruised around with their wings dragging behind the car with no objections from the stewards….
"Mercedes-Benz's Drive Pilot will arrive in the US in the second half of 2023"
I saw this car on the road yesterday. It was apparently doing fine with speed up slow down 405 freeway traffic. But possibly it was being driven? Anyway, it's out there.
Yesterday’s #Mercedes W136 had its origins in the pre-war period, but its successor, the 1953 ‘Ponton’ was a much more modern affair. #Ponton (pontoon) is a reference to this car’s fully smoothed bodywork, without identifiably separate mudguards and so on. This #Binz conversion (#TechnoClassica 2023) is configured as a rare ‘civilian’ estate car for an American customer - most Binz coach-built vehicles were ‘working’ vehicles such as ambulances or hearses. #WeirdCarMastodon#davidsdailycar
If I had fuck you money I’d use it for the vicarious fuck you mission of funding anyone—assault victims, stiffed vendors, ANYONE—who couldn’t afford to sue him on their own. Bury that motherfucker in all the lawsuits he deserves.