a city bus with the soul of an S- Class

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BUSES MAKE 32 BILLION JOURNEYS every year in Europe alone. That figure is bound to go up as global po[CENSORED]tions rise and more people move to urban centres. That’s why Mercedes-Benz — a luxury carmaker you’re unlikely to link with public transport — has debuted a flashy, futuristic new bus that drives itself, plans its own routes, saves fuel, and charges your phones.

The company's Future Bus is a twelve-metre long, semi-autonomous, glowing chariot that was announced earlier this week. It uses Daimler’s CityPilot technology, smart vehicle AI that’s similar to the tech it used for its Actros self-driving truck concept two years ago. The goal is to create as smooth, predictable, and energy-efficient of a ride as possible: Three qualities notoriously absent from buses' bad stereotypes.

Sharp bus design has long lagged behind subways and trains. But Mercedes-Benz wants to inject modernity and elegance to one of Earth’s most common, utilitarian modes of public transportation. Future Bus — while not incredibly spacious-looking — is outfitted with tons of cameras and long-range radar that extends 200 metres to visualise road hazards in 3D, and self-drive the bus down the road.
Future Bus’s maiden voyage shuttles flyers from the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam to the town of Haarlem, nearly 20km away. It’ll still be a while before we see a bus like this roaming up and down human-packed city avenues the world over — self-driving private cars are barely in the wild as it is. But this week’s announcement signals a promising prospect: A nicer bus could be right around the corner, driving its own way around it.

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