20 - 127
221 - 416
2 speed, Automatic, 8 speed, Auto-Shift Manual w/OD
Electric, Intercooled Turbo Gas/Electric I-4, Intercooled Turbo Premium Unleaded I-4
All Wheel Drive, Front Wheel Drive, Rear Wheel Drive
Photo: Tim Stevens
At its core, MB.Drive Assist Pro is a long name for a major step forward in the assistance Mercedes-Benz cars offer. The company launches it first in the new CLA, enabling the car to provide advanced, point-to-point autonomy on all types of roads.
This system can, for example, automatically change lanes and follow routes not only on the highway but also on urban streets. It can automatically stop at traffic lights, navigate complex intersections, and even smoothly brake for pedestrians. This is a substantial upgrade from anything seen from Mercedes-Benz before and is even more capable than the company's hands-off Drive Pilot system.
However, it is worth noting that while more manufacturers are offering comprehensive hands-off driving-assistance systems, such as Super Cruise from General Motors or BlueCruise from Ford Motor Company, MB.Drive Assist Pro is a purely hands-on system. Take your hands off the wheel, and the system will deactivate.
Photo: Tim Stevens
Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) like this require a comprehensive set of sensors to scan the world around them, and MB.Drive Assist Pro has it. The new CLA features a dozen ultrasonic sensors for short-range distance detection. It also has five radar sensors and ten cameras that look in all directions. In addition, it uses a capacitive-touch steering wheel to detect your hands. That means you will not need to jiggle the wheel every minute or so to let the car know you are still holding on.
Notably, MB.Drive Assist Pro skips the LiDAR sensor found on Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot in its EQS and S-Class sedans. Since LiDAR remains far more expensive than the optical, radar, and sonar sensors that the CLA uses, deploying software like this on a more attainable car like the CLA becomes possible. Mercedes-Benz equips every CLA with these sensors, but MB.Drive Assist Pro is not standard. The first three years of service access will cost $3,950.
While I still have not driven a car equipped with MB.Drive Assist Pro, I rode shotgun for an extended lap of downtown San Francisco in a new, electric CLA 250+ with EQ Technology and the feature.
We took our drive on a busy afternoon with heavy traffic and, more challenging, endless streams of tourists who gawked at the Transamerica Pyramid in one direction and at Fisherman's Wharf in the other. These conditions create exactly the kind of driving scenario where you might want a little help.
To start, the driver entered a route around the city into the car's navigation and let the little sedan take the lead. From there on out, over the next half hour, the car did the bulk of the heavy lifting. It moved smoothly through city traffic, stopping and going to avoid the cars ahead, and also stopping at red lights and stop signs.
Once the car identified the green light and saw that the way was clear, it automatically accelerated through the intersection. On a few occasions, we waited for pedestrians, some dutifully using crosswalks and others simply forging their own paths, but the car identified them early and ensured they had adequate clearance.
While double-parking is not quite as problematic in San Francisco as it is, say, in New York City, we came across a few stopped vehicles in traffic. In these situations, it was easy for the Mercedes engineer driving the vehicle to simply turn the wheel to give a little extra clearance to the illegally parked vehicle.
Once clear, the driver simply relaxed his grip on the wheel, and the car resumed control. He did not need to engage or disengage the system. The car simply resumed control in a much more collaborative way than many driver assistance systems on the road today, which require a firm grip to override.
Through our loop, we summited steep streets and drove through work zones without issue. The safety driver took over a few times to give extra clearance to pedestrians—after all, the developers are still fine-tuning the system—but at the end of my drive, I left thoroughly impressed.
