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By Edward Taylor
SINDELFINGEN, Germany (Reuters) – Mercedes-Benz engineers strive to meet all definitions of convenience in the new S-Class sedan as they seek to borrow a march on their rival Tesla, which has captivated the public with their “pet mode”.”
The German car manufacturer, inventor of the car, defends the “Einsitzkomfort”, the feeling that consumers feel when they lie in one of the comfortable seats.
That’s how “Uebertragungsverhalten,” or the seat’s ability to crash on the road, and “Langstreckenkomfort,” or long-range convenience features, told Reuters Juergen Weissinger, the vehicle’s leading mustache engineer.
The lexicon of developing engineering is a sign of Mercedes’ determination to push the barriers of automotive refinement while trying to claim the right to boast of the high-tech that has been hijacked through the pioneer of the Tesla electric car.
This led the Lastenheft, or S-Class engineering plan, to move from a brochure to a massive tome.
“The Lastenheft for this Class S that was conceptualized in 2014 is now 689 pages long,” Weissinger said at Daimler’s Sindelfingen plant.
“That’s times more than it was 30 years ago.”
The seats, and rear seats in particular, have a key battlefield in the automotive industry, where the rise of automated driving has made passenger delight as vital as the delight of the driver.
Tesla has accelerated the speed of industry innovation through remote software updates to introduce original features like “fart mode,” which emits a fart sound on car speakers for the excitement, or not of passengers.
Mercedes also to convince drivers that he has any idea of everything.
“The essence of the S-Class is comfort and protection in a luxury package,” Weissinger said, explaining that the seats have 19 internal motors: 8 for adjustments, 4 for massages, five for ventilation, one for lumbars and one to move a monitor attached to the back.
The seats also have built-in speakers so consumers can “feel” the sound.
Ten other massage systems are available, adding one that vibrates to the beat of music and another heated one that uses vibrant motors and inflatable air chambers in the seat.
Four radial enthusiasts on the cushion and two at the rear can cool passengers.
There are also protection innovations, adding virtual headlights that can cause precautionary rays on distracted pedestrians or assign front lines to the driving force that navigates between objects.
Navigation is facilitated through a three-dimensional augmented truth display, while a high-tech driving assistance formulates the car to drive automatically up to 60 kilometers per hour.
The so-called Level 3 automation formula will be in Germany for the first time in 2021, Mercedes said.
The new S-Class can be ordered in Germany from mid-September and will be at dealerships in December.The market launch in the United States and China will begin in February 2021.
(Report through Edward Taylor; edited through Mark Potter)