
An hour in a car driven by AI makes everything else feel…dumb
by HANNAH ELLIOTT
IN OCTOBER 2025, Nvidia Corp became the first public company to be worth US$5 trillion (RM23.5 trillion) — then promptly lost hundreds of billions of dollars in market value amid concerns about a bust of a potential artificial intelligence (AI) bubble.
As analysts and even founders continue to warn that AI may be more speculative than substantive, car companies may beg to differ. This month, Nvidia is inching back, valued at around US$4.55 trillion, bolstered in no small part by confidence in the automotive sector.
Nvidia has collaborated with many carmakers, including Toyota Motor Corp, Volvo Car Corp, BYD Co Ltd, Li Auto Inc, Lucid Group Inc, NIO Inc, Rivian Automotive Inc and General Motors Co, to develop AI-powered autonomous-driving and advanced driver-assistance systems.
That’s part of its estimated US$5 billion automotive business in 2025, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. On Jan 5, the company announced details about its new and unique MB.Drive Assist Pro for Mercedes-Benz US llc, the next generation of AI-based driving.
But what is it like to experience a personal car being driven completely by AI? This writer tried it in December 2025 in San Francisco riding with Joe Taylor, a senior systems engineer at Mercedes-Benz, in the automaker’s new US$47,250 Mercedes-Benz CLA. It has the most advanced AI driving system you can buy in the US in a private vehicle to date.
This writer’s takeaway? An hour in a car driven by AI makes everything else feel, well, dumb. Once consumers feel safe relinquishing control of their daily commute, this writer predict they will eagerly adopt AI-driven cars, which will become status symbols among those in urban centres.
The trial consisted of two portions. In the first part, this writer drove the car using a less-advanced system, MB.Drive Assist, which uses a combination of highly intelligent algorithms and end-to-end AI models to help the car drive itself on highways and city streets.
It is already available across the entire Mercedes-Benz lineup, but it still needs occasional human input like a hand on the steering wheel. The service costs US$1,950, a one-time fee.
This writer engaged it by pressing a button on the left side of the steering wheel, which let the car creep forward into traffic, eventually steering itself through complex situations like the multi-lane left turn from Howard Street onto the Embarcadero.
Preliminary estimates of driving range for the car are 694km to 792km on a full battery, depending on the variant
It avoided unpredictable drivers in intersections, navigated the generalised chaos of roundabouts and adjusted its speed around construction sites, all without my hands on the steering wheel.
In fact, this writer stayed hands-off for chunks of time, occasionally being prompted to touch the steering rack to let the car know that this writer was still engaged. (Sensors in the steering wheel detect your hands there; flashing icons and sound alerts ensue if you go too long without touching it.)
Mostly, this writer kept her hands on her knees, taking in the view as the car crested steep hills and paused, held in place while women with strollers crossed the street — a surreal moment that stirred a low hum of anxiety. This writer’s foot hovered over the brake pedal, just in case.
At one point, the CLA didn’t slow down and move over fast enough for my taste when approaching a double-parked cargo truck outside a cafe; this writer quickly braked and steered left.
Other times, it appeared to simply turn off the system when it didn’t like the environment, like entering a valet lane at a hotel. A dashboard icon alerted this writer when it disengaged; the car would roll to a halt at that point unless and until this writer started operating it again.
MB.Drive Assist left this writer thinking that she could easily become too disconnected from the act of driving, when in reality this writer still needed to be present and alert.
Driving with the more expensive, more advanced and not-yet-available MB.Drive Assist Pro inspired more confidence, since the car is consistently in charge when the programme is running.
It’s already operating in China and will be available in the US by the end of the year. A three-year subscription costs US$3,950.
MB.Drive Assist Pro is extreme SAE-Level 2 driving, which means it doesn’t require hands on the steering wheel at any time.
The car will drive itself completely from a starting point to a final destination, even though the driver must still remain attentive (eyes on the road) because they are still legally responsible for safe-vehicle operation.
This was the closest this writer felt to the Waymo rides she took last fall — but far different, too, because this was a normal-looking car made for anyone to buy, not an awkward-looking fleet vehicle.
The leap forward here is that the driving being done by the car can be collaborative if and when this writer want to jump in.
Drive Assist Pro weaves in any input on the steering wheel, if this writer decide to intervene, without cancelling out the whole programme.
That means this writer can make minor adjustments from the driver’s seat if this writer want and it’s not a big deal. Mercedes-Benz calls it “our philosophy of human-machine collaboration.”
Ali Khan, the director of product marketing at Nvidia, described the car as “AI-defined,” a vehicle informed, enhanced and enabled by AI to its very core. The humanistic element of this level of AI is essential, he said, so that “the car sees everything and understands what it sees.”
MB.Drive Assist Pro uses 10 cameras, five radar sensors and 12 ultrasonic sensors that provide raw data to a supercomputer that makes sense of those massive data streams.
It employs Nvidia’s AI end-to-end stack for core driving tasks, plus a parallel classical safety stack — built on Nvidia’s Halos safety system — that adds built-in redundancies, fail-safe checks and other safety guardrails. (“End-to-end stack” means the whole layered system was developed over an entire life cycle of building, deploying and training the AI, from initial data collection to final integration into the car. Halos ensures the vehicle operates within defined safety parameters.)
All of which is to say: The more you drive it, the better it gets, since the AI is constantly learning from the data it gathers on every drive.
This writer felt comfortable inside the cabin because the car moved with total authority. It anticipated the road, avoided potholes and deep rain puddles and it never hesitated in sticky traffic.
It expertly swam in San Francisco’s sea of jaywalkers and zippy Waymos; it sailed through roundabouts and accommodated errantly parked delivery vans without a hitch. Most impressive was its ability to know the nuances of good driving, like when it rolled through yellow lights and crept forward a smidge to evade other traffic, correctly reading street conditions and behaving accordingly.
The highlight? It knew when to turn right on a red stoplight and when to remain stationary until the light turned green if right-on-red was sign-posted as forbidden at that particular intersection.
We haven’t quite reached the AI utopia Sam Altman foresees, even in the world of cars. The new voice-activated virtual assistant — which is powered by Google Cloud’s Automotive AI Agent — ignored this writer’s repeated requests that the car stop reading news headlines during the drive.
It also flubbed questions about whether it was in fact ChatGPT and didn’t respond when this writer asked it to reduce its own speaking volume to a conversational level.
It never did figure out how to navigate this writer back to the 1 Hotel San Francisco, either, instead trying to offer this writer options for “one hotel in the city.” This writer ended up using her smartphone.
Safety is paramount — the public perception of which is as critical as the reality that AI-driven vehicles are in far fewer lethal accidents than those driven by humans. For all its advances, MB.Drive Assist Pro works only on city streets, not highways, for now.
Still, AI driving is authentically here, able to intuit, anticipate and adapt with elegance and ease. The jump from rote algorithm to humanlike comprehension has this writer believing that for many people, learning to trust an AI-defined car will be a welcome relief from the doldrums of daily commuting.
This writer still want the option of driving her own car, of course, but this writer won’t miss sitting in gridlock traffic, hands glued to the steering wheel while this writer’s eyes glaze over. A machine that can handle that unpleasant task while this writer read or answer emails? Yes, please. — Bloomberg
- This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition
The post Nvidia, Mercedes’ AI team-up makes other cars feel dumb appeared first on The Malaysian Reserve.





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