One of two futuristic automotive visions we’re covering this week is this Mercedes concept vehicle, the Vision URBANETIC electric van. The URBANETIC is designed to be a new kind of crossover—one that combines mass transport and transport of goods. Are we looking at a new, piecemeal form of specialized public transportation? An autonomous taxi that doubles as a delivery rig? An eco-friendly fleet that can quickly respond to extraordinary demand, for example when Lincoln Center empties out after a show, or to accommodate holiday mass-travel surges? All of the above.
The vehicle could fulfill the role of the next phase of taxi and transport services. In turn of 20th century Stuttgart, Daimler production cabs populated the first automotive taxi service in the world, and the company may be positioning itself in a similar fashion for this century, but of course in a global context. With Uber Eats delivery now a household reality, and automated delivery of goods rapidly expanding, a market has opened up and will soon explode globally, and it looks as though Mercedes could place itself in the vanguard of turnkey fleet manufacturing solutions by offering a series of vehicles designed for autonomous conveyance and goods-transport services.
Mercedes sees the URBANETIC and its eventual EV workhorse progeny as a primary means of reducing congestion and pollution in urban areas, part of what they call a ‘holistic system solution’, which suggests integrated, communicative, and eco-relevant. The van will carry a cargo module to do double-duty as it ferries up to a dozen passengers at a time to work, school, lunch dates and dentist appointments.
The URBANETIC and its kin will operate via a proprietary IT infrastructure that will alter its rounds to account for supply and demand, and the system will be able to evaluate information and ‘learn’ about its landscape and routes to anticipate ebb and flow. Such a fleet, Mercedes envisions, will employ a flexibility and attendant reactive ability that will quickly make it an urban transport benchmark.
Check and mate for next-phase urban fleet service? Mercedes certainly hopes so. Right now they appear to be the only established automaker in town thinking this way.
