Mercedes-Benz is going all in on the car of tomorrow. First it showed off the wildly futuristic F 015 concept last year and now Autocar is reporting that Daimler's chairman of the board, Dr. Dieter Zetsche, is saying that one day its cars will act as assistants and run errands. Said errands are car-based and include stuff like dropping the kids at school. What, you thought the 2026 C-Class would do your grocery shopping too? Zetsche made his comments at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Germany.

Zetsche made his comments at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Germany. While cars that run errands for you are a ways away, he did say that Mercedes and Bosch had already begun testing a fleet of vehicles that can communicate with one another, albeit in a limited fashion. So far the communication experiment is limited to parking. "It works using car sensors that can find empty spaces along a road and then share the information with the Mercedes back-end database. That information is then shared with other Mercedes cars," Dr. Zetsche said. Parking is the short-term goal, with the long-term goal partly involving cars that talk to each other while on the road so that drivers can find the most efficient route, for example.

In addition to offering quicker commutes and helping you find parking, the Mercedes of the future will also act as doctors. That's not exactly what the Daimler chairman of the board said but it kind of sounds like it. "The car will use its sensors to monitor the health and wellbeing of passengers, and then adjust settings to improve your situation and blood pressure." That likely means future Mercs will adjust lighting (both color and brightness) along with the music and its volume according to your current physical state. That all sounds good...but will humans still be behind the wheel when all this is going on? According to Zetsche, yes. "But that time will always include driving a car for pure pleasure. We will certainly never forget that at Mercedes."