Your ‘smart’ car knows it’s raining at your destination

Picture yourself in an automotive utopia: a world where you know about the freeway pile-up way before getting stuck on the onramp. A place where your car can tell you whether it's raining where you'll be three hours from now. That would be the same car that will check the forecast and remind you to bring an umbrella, even if you didn't ask it to.

This is the world Dieter Zetsche hopes to create with the help of his team of German engineers.

In a polished keynote address Tuesday at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the head of Daimler AG and of Mercedes-Benz Cars wasn't shy about his place in the automotive industry and what he sees as his duty to create a better driving experience for mankind.

"It ain't bragging if you can back it up," he said, quoting Muhammad Ali.

As a new Mercedes SL appeared onstage, Zetsche told the packed LVH-Las Vegas Hotel theater that new energy systems, merged with new communications systems, will help create a post-oil era. By creating smarter cars, we can achieve independence from oil while helping to ease congestion in some of the larger populated areas in the world, he said.

Zetsche acknowledged that automotive industry technology often lags consumer electronics because of the long lead time required to assemble cars and get them to market.

"How do we match the pace of automotive innovation with the pace of consumer electronics? Our answer is the cloud," Zetsche said .

By creating a car from which the technology components are controlled via cloud computing, autos can automatically receive software updates without a return to a dealership.

"I admit it won't change the world but it will help in terms of independence," Zetsche said.

And the cloud system makes possible the Mercedes-Benz Virtual Private Network, which offers a secure Internet connection to access social media, Internet radio or other Internet sites. All of this comes standard with the new SL.

"But let's be honest: That's just what keeps you in the game today,'' Zetsche said. "We want to stay ahead of it."

While most people have access to voice-activated applications and technology, many of us have issues with that technology. Zetsche, too, has experienced this, and announced that he is working on a system that understands human language nuances better than most, while adding helpful features. This is the part of the car's technology that will tell you whether it's raining in the next state after the car knows your destination.

"What about a car that reminds you to bring an umbrella because it will be raining three hours from now when you get to where you're headed?" Zetsche asked .

Now buckle up. This is where Zetsche really gets going.

Mercedes-Benz plans to add 12 cities this year to its Car2Go car sharing program and to introduce a new project, Car2gether. The latest project is a peer-to-peer ride share for mobile users who want to offer a ride to a stranger. Think hitchhiking for the 21st century.

Zetsche likened the idea to a social network on the road. In addition to promoting ride-sharing, Zetsche announced that Mercedes is using the smartphone as a link between electric-drive vehicles and the infrastructure needed to charge them. By creating a "vehicle home page," you can use the Internet to plan your route, check your car's battery status and find nearby charging stations.

"Through connectivity, cars might eventually become 'smart grids on wheels,' efficiently storing electricity from renewable sources," Zetsche said.

Then, Zetsche proposed using the web to manage huge amounts of road traffic. Via car-to-car in formation, drivers theoretically could know about tight spots before it's too late. Alerts on obstacles such as black ice could help save lives, he said.

"The point is to share the news with everyone else before they get there. The connected car is the proactive car," Zetsche said.

Contact reporter Laura Carroll at lcarroll@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4588. Follow her on Twitter at @lscvegas.