Hi guys, welcome to the exploration of yet another—or should I say, two new vehicles. But there's someone who's missing. I think you know who I'm talking about. Ola, great to see you.
Hi Sarah. Good to see you again.
Now, it's been about a year since you took me for that test drive up on the Schöckl in the electric G. I missed out on Sweden, but Marie filled in. Now we're here with two camouflaged vehicles. Tell me, what's going on today?
Well, it's great to be back testing some cars. And that G experience was—it was fun, right? A little bit scary, yeah, but we handled all situations. So today we're in Immendingen, our test track south of G, and we're looking at this fantastic new CLA here, fully electric. Next-generation vehicle that ushers in an era of a whole generation of new vehicles from Mercedes. The engineers have been really smart here. They have developed a modular platform where we have also a brand-new hybridized, electrified combustion version of the car also coming.
Okay, sounds very promising.
Absolutely. Most intelligent car that we have ever made. Supercomputer on board, sensors everywhere, artificial intelligence-based software. It feels like this is the complete package.
You know, Ola, one thing that really stuck out to me in the design concept was the headlights. Now I know these are still camouflaged, but can you give us a hint? What can we expect?
Absolutely. Design is super important to us. And of course our designers, they love those little details. So when they look at the headlight, of course the headlight has a function, but it's also a piece of art. It's like jewelry on the car. So you have this sleek, sporty shape. But the headlights, especially at night, it's the first thing you see. It's got to be perfect.
It's got to be perfect. Can I take a look? Should we take a peek? Let's do it! Oh, look at that! Oh well, those artists did not disappoint us, did they? That's looking pretty sharp.
Not at all. And do you see the cues here to the Mercedes stars with those beautiful pieces of glass?
I love that. I'm glad you pointed that out.
Yeah, but it's also high performance. A headlight is all about safety. You know, at night you want to be able to, in a very, very precise way, make sure that you see everything you need to see, but also not blind people that are coming in the other direction. This is important. So it's an intelligent headlight—not just light and not just beauty.
Doesn't just look cool, it also works well. I can't wait to put it to the test. Shall we take a spin?
Let's do it. I think we start with the electric one.
All right, let's do it. But you're driving.
Okay, all right. Safety first. Safety first. Hey Mercedes, how are you? All the better for hearing your voice. Hey, who is this? So this is your Mercedes virtual assistant. It's like you have a butler in the car that is at your service and can answer questions and help you operate the car, or any other question that you might have.
I have always wanted a butler.
Yeah. This is MBUX, Mercedes-Benz Operating System, in its first version. So every digital feature that you can possibly think of, you'll probably find in this car.
So we're in Immendingen. This is a small town about an hour south of Stuttgart. And this is the test track for Mercedes-Benz. It's probably the best test track in the world. We got this huge, huge area to create and recreate roads—pretty much any road condition that you can think of. You can go off-road here, you can do city driving here, you can go high-speed here, you can do handling maneuvers, almost on a small racetrack. So this is the place where these cars go through thousands and thousands and thousands of kilometers of harsh testing before we launch them.
Okay, so this is where the cars come, you put them through the paces, and then you deliver them to the consumer.
Exactly. Mercedes, since forever, has been known for extreme testing. I mean, extreme.
I got a taste of that up on the Schöckl. Extreme heat in the desert, extreme cold in Northern Sweden, just south of the Arctic Circle. I saw that video.
So we do it all. We shake the vehicles. Everything that you can possibly think of, these cars have to go through before we start production. Since, of course—one of the reasons, well, you buy a Mercedes, it's a car that lasts.
