Several automakers are working to make their cars better conversationalists. Mercedes-Benz may be farthest along. This week, the company announced a new partnership with Google to develop natural language search for its navigation systems.
In marketing-speak, the company says, “Mercedes-Benz and Google Cloud today announced the expansion of their strategic partnership to introduce new conversational capabilities to the MBUX Virtual Assistant, powered by Google Cloud’s new Automotive AI Agent. Built using Gemini on Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s Automotive AI Agent is specially tailored for the automotive industry and can reference information from Google Maps Platform to give users more detailed and personalized conversational responses about navigation, points of interest, and more.”
In plain terms, Mercedes says your car will help you find a place to eat dinner.
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Mercedes suggests you ask the car, “Could you guide me to the nearest fine-dining restaurant for a unique culinary experience?” When it offers suggestions, you could then ask for more specifics. The company suggests follow-ups like, “Does the restaurant have good reviews?” or “What is the chef’s signature dish?”
Mercedes is not the only automaker pursuing something like this. Volkswagen already provides a ChatGPT-powered voice assistant in some of its 2025 cars.
At last week’s CES consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, Honda showed off a pair of future electric cars that hold conversations with their owners. The models even cross-reference owners’ schedules to ask how certain meetings went.
Mercedes, however, might set its offering apart by its price. Motor Trend reports that Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius “promises that the new Google-based search system won’t be a paid subscription feature and will be available for all current Mercedes models for free.”
It will appear first on the upcoming replacement for the CLA sedan, the company says.
