Tesla’nın Ötesinde: Mercedes-Benz, Yenilikçi Teknolojiyle EV Manzarasını Yeniden Tanımlıyor

Otomotiv Yeniliği

For many years, the mantle of innovation in the automotive industry has seemingly been taken by new EV manufacturers, like Tesla (TSLA ) and BYD.

Yıllardır, otomotiv endüstrisindeki yenilik pelerini, Tesla ve BYD gibi yeni elektrikli araç üreticileri tarafından alınmış gibi görünüyor.

However, it would be a mistake to disregard all the “legacy” manufacturers. Recently, Mercedes (MBGAF) has made a big announcement with a wide array of innovations that could completely change how cars are made, illustrating that the experience and R&D firepower of older brands should not be too easily dismissed.

2040’da Mobilite Vizyonları

In Kasım 2024, Mercedes flew in a selected panel of journalists to Germany to present its vision of the future of automobiles and mobility.

Bu, 2040+ için üç küresel şehirde bir vizyonla başladı: Londra, Los Angeles ve Shenzhen.

These visions of the future are something that Mercedes sees itself as instrumental in bringing to life, thanks to the innovations presented in the same event.

Londra

Kaynak: Inside EVs

Here, the focus seems to be on reducing urban congestion, matching the current trajectory of London’s urban policies:

• İnsan sürücülü ve otonom araçlar arasında paylaşımlı alan, sinyalleriyle birlikte.
• Park sadece (pahalı) çok katlı garajlarda.
• Küçük teslimatlar küçük robotlar tarafından yapılır ve daha büyük otonom teslimat vanları yalnızca özel olarak tahsis edilmiş bölgelerde yetkilidir.
• Gölgelik sağlayan ve güneş panelleriyle enerji üreten çok sayıda yeşil alan.

Los Angeles

Kaynak: Inside EVs

As this urban landscape is a lot less dense, the car-focused American style of urbanism and culture persists, but with an overlay of green technology and advanced tech:

• Ayrılmış bisiklet yolları, EV’ler, otonom araçlar ve “klasik arabalar” karışımıyla dolu araba şeritlerinin yanında yer alır.
• Londra’ya kıyasla, halka açık garajlar ve yol kenarı park yerleri hâlâ mevcuttur.
• Dronlar ve robotlar her yerde bulunur, yoğun bir kişiselleştirilmiş teslimat ağı sağlar ve yangın gibi iklim değişikliği risklerini azaltır.
• EV’ler, indüktif (temassız) şarj istasyonları ve çok güneşli havayı kullanan güneş kaplaması karışımıyla şarj edilir.

Shenzhen

Kaynak: Inside EVs

Today, the city is essentially China’s San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and this future vision reflects it. This is a much more vertical, ultra-dense, and ultra-modern urban landscape, built with mobility over three dimensions in mind:

• Park sadece çok katlı garajlarda yetkilidir.
• VTOL (Dikey Kalkış ve İniş) taksileri, şehir içinde insanları taşıyor, muhtemelen otonom uçuş programlarıyla.
• Yer ulaşımı da çok katmanlıdır; yayalar ve bisikletliler trafiğin üzerinde kendi asılı yollarına sahiptir.
• Robotlar her yerde ve herkesin hayatının bir parçası; yemek yapmaktan teslimata kadar birçok hizmeti yerine getiriyor.
• Parklar ve yeşil alanlar ısıyı azaltır ve ortak yaşam alanı sağlar.
• Yüksek hızlı trenler, özellikle Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Büyük Körfez Bölgesi’nin geri kalanıyla birlikte, Shenzhen’i komşu şehirlere bağlamada da kritik rol oynar.

Kaynak: Research Gate

Mercedes-Benz CLA EV Prototipi

Besides technologies, one car prototype Mercedes presented was the CLA, an electric sedan prototype with extraordinary battery capacity.

Bu model, şarj durakları dahil 24 saat içinde 2,309 mil (3,715 km) menzil kat edebildi, bu da uzun vadede menzil kaygısının EV’ler için ciddi bir sorun olmayacağını gösteren çarpıcı bir örnek.

The performance was the result of combining 2 factors:

• Yüksek verim, 5.2 mil/kWh enerji verimliliğiyle, dünyadaki en verimli EV olabilir, Lucid Air’dan bile daha iyi.
• 800 voltluk çekiş bataryası ve 320 kilovatlık maksimum şarj hızı; her şarj durağı yaklaşık 10 dakikada aracın şarj seviyesini %10’dan %50’ye çıkararak her seferinde 186 mil (299 km) menzil ekliyor.

Kendinden Şarj Olan Güneşli Arabalar

Of course, efficient reloading at charging stations is a must for EVs on long-distance trips. Still, in the end, most of our car usage is smaller daily trips for regular commutes and traveling in our immediate neighborhood.

Bu yüzden arabalarımızın bu tür günlük yolculukları gerçekleştirecek kadar kendiliğinden şarj olabilmesi harika olurdu. Üstelik ücretsiz olursa daha da iyi.

This is the promise of Mercedes’ solar paint. It is not just the integration of solar photovoltaic cells into the body of the car, as was previously considered like for the Mercedes EQXX and its large solar roof.

Kaynak: Mercedes-Benz [securities_stock_price_tag symbol="MBG.DE" exchange="XETRA"]

Instead, this paint is expected to generate electricity directly, making the whole surface of the car into a solar generator.

Kaynak: Motor Trend

What is especially impressive is that this solar paint is apparently reaching efficiency as high as 20%, not much lower than much heavier solar panels, despite weighing only 50g/m2, a key consideration for putting in on a car.

How it works is obviously a trade secret for now, but it seems an ultra-transparent nanoparticle paint coating is a central element and has already been tested.

Covering the entire body surface of a midsize SUV, which is about 11 square meters (118 square feet), it could potentially add 7,450 miles (12,000 km) of range annually.

That works out to about 20 miles per day (32.8 km), which would be enough to cover 62% of a typical Stuttgarter daily commute.

Inside EVs

This performance could be even higher in sunnier climates, like California or Spain, essentially removing the need for charging stations for most users.

Charging stations being full, too slow, or too rare are major concerns about EVs and driving toward a major comeback of hybrid cars. So this technology could be a game changer, especially in regions with a Mediterranean or tropical climate, where strong sun radiation could make charging facilities almost irrelevant.

Artırılmış Gerçeklik Sürüşü

Recently, mostly driven by Tesla and Chinese EV re-designs, the trend has been to add a large central screen in cars’ dashboards for handling car control.

Instead, Mercedes envisions using augmented reality glasses to allow a virtual screen that hovers just above the dashboard.

Kaynak: Inside EVs

The central idea is that in the near future, virtual reality might become a lot more common, and automakers should already look at how to integrate it seamlessly into the driving experience, similar to smartphone pairing and integration.

Another way to leverage AR/VR tech for automakers would be to allow prospective buyers to customize their future cars. Using a full VR headset, they could directly visualize how different options would look in the final product, without the car dealership having to have them physically available on location.

Kaynak: Inside EVs

Nöromorfik Bilgisayarlar

Something the auto industry is starting to realize is that autonomous driving will likely be very computation-heavy. This means that not only will it require powerful enough hardware, but the navigation computer energy consumption will actually be non-negligible. Such power usage will likely impact EV ranges and the overall performance of robotaxis.

One way to reduce it is to switch from traditional AI chips to neuromorphic computing. Neuromorphic computing is a method where computer systems take inspiration from the brains of living systems with neurons.

Kaynak: Tech Target

This is the path followed by Mercedes, which went as far as shaping its circuit boards to look like neurons in this demonstration to get the point through.

Kaynak: Inside EVs

The research on neuromorphic computing was done in partnership with the Canadian University of Waterloo.

Bio-Mühendislik Sentetik Deri

While eco-conscious or vegan buyers often criticize animal products, luxury car interiors are nevertheless associated with the feel of leather seats. Faux-leather alternatives exist already, but always feel a little “cheap”, the opposite of what a premium brand like Mercedes is looking for.

So its researchers created a version that mimics leather down to the microscopic level, making its structure and texture very believable. It is made from material extracted from old tires, protein powder, among other things.

Kaynak: Inside EVs

Because it is so similar to leather, it is dyed in the exact same way, which adds the distinct leather-like smell that is looked after by new car buyers.

Lastly, this material is apparently even tougher than real leather, being very resistant to exposure to the sun as well as the action of sweat and chemicals like hand sanitizers, sunscreen, or body lotion.

Kaynak: Inside EVs

Entegre Frenler

Traditionally, cars’ brakes simply rely on increased friction on the wheels to slow down. This not only requires regular and expensive maintenance, but it also emits a lot of brake dust, which turns out into a significant contributor to air pollution by car traffic.

EV’ler, fren enerjisini batarya paketine geri döndürerek (elektrik motorlarını ters yönde çalıştırarak) frenleme yapabiliyor, ancak güçlü frenleme hâlâ geleneksel frenlere ihtiyaç duyuyor.

So Mercedes is taking it one step further.

Sürüş İçindeki Frenler

The company’s engineers have created “in-drive brakes,” which are the housing of an electric vehicle’s drive unit.

Kaynak: Inside EVs

The disk is water-cooled, and it doesn’t spin, and the brake pad is circular, and it spins with the motor. With this system, scrubbing speed is achieved by pushing the circular brake pad onto the stationary disk.

What makes this innovation very impressive is that it would mean the car’s brake system would never require any maintenance in the entire life of the car.

It would keep all the brake dust contained, without needing to be emptied either. This adds to a few other side benefits as well:

• Water cooling would mean no risk of brakes ever overheating.
• Completely covered, aerodynamic wheels that will help lower vehicles’ drag coefficient.
• Braking noises would be reduced.

Mikro Dönüştürücüler

The way EVs convert back speed into electricity is through a converter. Most of them do it with a converter per motor.

Instead, Mercedes is looking at hooking up micro-converters to the cells in an EV’s battery in parallel rather than in series.

This could be especially useful in combination with mixed NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) and LFP (lithium-ferrum-phosphate) battery cells, with some chemistry more apt at taking in more power at once.

As the batteries’ charging speed is often the chokepoint in how much power can be regenerated when braking too hard, this could boost both the car’s efficiency and further reduce the strain on the brake pad.

Başka Bir Geleneksel Yenilikçi

Mercedes is not the only automaker moving fast to catch up with the EV revolution. The largest automaker in the world, Toyota, is also looking at embracing hybrids and EVs, after many years of dragging its feet.

This is something we covered in further detail previously in “Toyota (TM) Spotlight: Kapsamlı Bir Yaklaşımla Güvenli Oynamak”. Here are a few examples to put in perspective Mercedes’ innovations:

• An ongoing focus on hybrids, exemplified by a new Guinness world record for the highest MPG (miles per gallon) for a coast-to-coast drive in Eylül 2024 achieved with a Prius.
• An aggressive roadmap toward new batteries for Evs:
• “Performance” lithium-ion batteries with a range target of 800km (500 miles) and charging time of 20 minutes or less, expected for 2026.
• “High-performance” lithium-ion batteries with a range target of 1,000km (620 miles) and charging time of 20 minutes or less, expected for 2028.
• “Breakthrough” in solid-state battery with a range target of 1,000km (620 miles) and full charging time of 10 minutes or less, expected for 2028.
  • Later on 1,200 km range will also be targeted and even 1450km/900 miles following an announced “technological breakthrough” in battery tech in 2023.
• Possibly hydrogen combustion engine (not based on fuel cells), in case hydrogen production gets cheap enough to compete with EVs and creates a new hydrogen economy.
• Maybe more an interesting anecdote, Toyota is also involved in the development of the Lunar Cruiser as part of the Artemis Program, in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Kaynak: Toyota

yeni bir hidrojen ekonomisi yaratır. Belki daha çok ilginç bir anekdot olarak, Toyota da Japon Uzay Araştırma Ajansı (JAXA) ile iş birliği içinde Artemis Programı kapsamında Lunar Cruiser’ın geliştirilmesinde yer alıyor.