Mercedes-Benz looks to the future of city transportation

This is the Mercedes-Benz Vision Urbanetic concept, in which the company envisages autonomous vehicles which can be changed for use in minutes, so that they can transport people by day and goods by night, writes Brian Byrne.

It was revealed yesterday afternoon in Copenhagen during a conference on the future of mobility in densely populated urban areas by the 2030s, Urban Transportation of the Future.

As part of its work towards more efficient transportation, especially the most difficult 'last mile', the Mercedes-Benz Vans Division has been developing a number of technologies related to the moving of people and goods, which can be combined in different ways to provide mobility solutions for different circumstances.

With a third of the planet's population expected to be living in cities by 2050, up from 50pc at the moment, the already overloaded transport systems for both people and goods will be unable to cope. In addition to the stresses of traffic congestion, pollution from the current type of vehicles would seriously impact the quality of life for city residents.

Fergus Conheady of Mercedes-Benz Ireland's commercials division, who attended the event, noted that this was the latest in a series of forward looking conferences by the company over the last few years, which had previously previewed electric van and other related delivery technologies, many of which have already arrived.

"This is taking that process to a very high new level," he said. "The issues it addresses will have very far reaching consequences for the whole automotive and logistics industry, as well as how people are going to live in the not so distant future."

(We will be reporting in detail on this event and how the future of moving people and goods in the growing cities of the future looks from a Mercedes-benz perspective.)

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