On Thursday morning, a veritable car from the future was spotted zipping around San Francisco. The sleek auto prompted a flurry of Tweets, Instagrams, and Reddit chat, with everyone asking what's up. Turns out Mercedes-Benz was behind the brouhaha. It was all part of the luxury brand's F015 self-driving car concept.
Here are a few images locals snapped of the futuristic car in action:
Mercedes Self-Driving Car Seems To Have Gone Rogue In San Francisco #autonomouscars http://t.co/A2rtm6KPdE pic.twitter.com/CcuTrJ78aH
— Gregory Henderson (@gregoryhenders) March 5, 2015The new Mercedes-Benz F 015 self-driving concept car spotted on the streets of San Francisco today. via /r/pics … pic.twitter.com/BstgSwyla1
— Reddit Pics (@redditpicsbot) March 5, 2015But why was it cruising the streets of San Francisco? Wired has one theory:
"The most likely explanation for the jaunt around the Bay Area is that Mercedes-Benz is filming some sort of promotional video about, or at least including, the F015. What’s unclear is whether there’s a human hidden behind those windows, and if not, how the car senses the world around it. It’s free of the spinning LIDAR system used on many self-driving cars, and there are no visible cameras or radars. It’s also missing things like side-view mirrors that are mandated by federal regulations, so our guess is that it’s not a legitimate, government-sanctioned test vehicle, but something closer to a film prop. Not that there’s anything wrong with that."
The F015 comes with spinning seats (for when the "driver" wants to talk to passengers) and LED illumination; it can sense pedestrians, has no side-view mirrors, and can even project a crosswalk on the ground. Just don't expect to buy one of these beauties for quite some time. Release of the F015 isn't expected for at least two decades.
