Mercedes-Benz F015 autonomous concept - first ride

The theory of autonomous driving is all about giving time back to the driver. So this concept, as the S-Class of tomorrow, aims to show just what can be possible at the top end of a market of autonomous cars, where that time you get back from not driving really is treated as a luxury.

Enter the cabin for the first time and you’re struck by just how Mercedes has managed to so radically change something that’s usually so familiar, in terms of layout, materials and the absence of the usual ‘hard points’. It’s like one of those rooms they erect in IKEA with a clever, Tardis-like and minimalist use of space.

The four-door F015 does without conventional B-pillars, so access to the luxurious cabin is via a pair conventional front and a pair of rear-hinged doors.

Despite all that space, it has only got four seats; this is no MPV, remember. The seats swivel by 30deg when you open the doors to allow easy access, and can be put in two seating arrangements, either in two rows of two, or all facing one another with the front pair of seats swivelled around.

Enter the cabin and you'll nod with approval with the quality of the material selection; there are premium woods, leather, carpet, and metals, all seamlessly blending into one another in a flowing space.

Living alongside these luxurious materials are six touchscreens, one mounted at the front as a dashboard that can be controlled by gesture controls, another on the back wall, and then four more mounted into the doors. These screens allow the individual passengers to control everything from the infotainment options to the speed of the car itself, all by touch and swipe controls. Images from the outside world, or even further afield, can be displayed around the screens also, as can live TV pictures from sports games for a 360deg view of the action.

Seeing four seats facing one another in a car takes surprisingly little time to get used to. Once the doors are shut, the seatbelts are locked in and the car is moving, it all feels very normal. Indeed, the car feels trustworthy enough for you not to have to focus on what it is doing, and you can concentrate on that lost art of conversation with your fellow passengers.

It’s also fascinating how the concept of speed is taken out of the equation when you’re not behind the wheel and are getting on with something else; you’ve got the time back from the fact you’re being driven, so you don’t bat much of an eyelid at a traffic jam as you’ve got an environment and the tools to use the time productively.

Should you tire of being chauffeured around, then you can still drive the F105 yourself. The driver’s seat spins around to face the front, a steering wheel pops out the dashboard and there are pedals in the floor.

It’s worth noting that in spite of pushing the autonomous technology, Mercedes says it will never remove the ability for a driver to drive the car themselves, and it still wants to make all its future cars good to drive. Unlike Google, for example, which removes the driver and any kind of control completely from the equation.

Take control of the F015 and the LED lights in the grille shine white to show that a human is driving it; they are blue when the car is driving itself. When in its autonomous mode, it can do all manner of clever stuff, perhaps most intriguingly stopping when it sees pedestrians wanting to cross the road, then checking if it is safe for them to do so before projecting a zebra crossing onto the road and saying “please go ahead” through some external speakers. All very courteous.