Mercedes-Benz has announced that it will soon launch its operating system, MB.OS, which will be a central part of all its products. Developed in-house by Mercedes-Benz in close cooperation with Google and NVIDIA, among others, MB.OS is expected to provide completely new navigation, better infotainment, more self-driving functions, and greater opportunity to update the car over-the-air (OTA).
The new operating system will be based on a Chip-to-Cloud architecture and will provide access to all areas of the car, including infotainment, self-driving functions, comfort, driving, and charging. The aim is to give customers a digital experience that is as unique as the cars themselves. The system is being developed to provide a complete customer experience that covers all aspects of driving, and it will be fully upgradeable and constantly offering improvements.
According to Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius, "We have chosen to become our own system architects by creating a system that gets full access to all the car's functions, and we have done it together with some of the world's best companies in various specialist areas." The goal is to offer a system that can quickly upgrade functions and will be open to selected partners.
One of the major partners in the development of MB.OS is NVIDIA, which will play an important role in improving self-driving functions in Level 2 and Level 3. The aim of Mercedes-Benz is to offer level 3 autonomous driving, which means that the car takes care of gas, brakes, and steering, and the driver can let go of the steering wheel, but the driver must still be prepared to take over when the car warns. This will be possible at speeds up to 130 km/h thanks to the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-chip, which can handle 254 TOPS (trillions of calculations per second).
Google is another important partner in the development of MB.OS, and the company is involved in developing Mercedes-Benz's new navigation system. The navigation system will be all Mercedes-Benz, but it will get a lot of information from Google data such as real-time traffic information. Additionally, Mercedes-Benz customers will have access to Google places, where information about more than 200 million places and businesses with opening hours, reviews, and more will be available directly in the car's navigation.
A predecessor to MB.OS will be seen in the upcoming new Mercedes-Benz E-Class with the third-generation MBUX. A new MBUX API for Android here allows installing third-party apps that should provide a significantly better user experience than when apps are mirrored from a smartphone.
Mercedes-Benz is betting big on MB.OS, and the development of the new operating system is part of the company's larger plan to lead the way in the automotive industry's digital transformation. The launch of MB.OS is expected to offer customers a completely new and unique digital experience that will be as revolutionary as the brand's cars. The new operating system will make it possible to quickly upgrade functions, offer better self-driving functions, and provide greater opportunities to update the car over-the-air.
