MotoMan drives the 2015 Mercedes Benz Sprinter van on closed circuit in Germany at speed to test a unique tech feature: Crosswind assist – a system to keep the tall vehicle from behind blown around by strong wind. While there, we go behind the scenes at one of the rare car factories located in a major city and preview Mercedes’ coming second US plant . . .
If you’re coming by the grand canyon vom line it’s at a place like this it makes me think of service vehicles because i normally don’t but believe it or not there’s a hell of a lot of technology barium let’s check it out the most notable tech on the new sprinter is draft safety assists it’s got everything an s-class would have just in a bigger package if that’s even
Possible it’s got the usual life lane keep assist which helps you stay in your lane blind spot assist which alerts you when there’s another vehicle in your blind spot but you’ve definitely having a big van and then it’s got the very creatively named collision prevention assist which keeps you from hating people in front of you now if that’s not enough assists for
You there’s one more and it’s our favorite it’s called a cross wind assist – 110 kilometers an hour for ramming speed and hands off the wheel note the air sac ninety hundred buck ten i would kind of pushed pushed over a little bit you and i have been to a lot of car factories before but never one in the center of a city through common in dusseldorf this factory
Has a bit of a colorful history of who wasn’t always owned by mercedes-benz in fact it wasn’t always a car factory it was a metal factory and then it was purchased by dick jefe which later became part of auto union then 50 years ago mercedes-benz bought it to manufacture panel vans and then now it’s used to manufacture sprinters in normal factories in the middle
Of nowhere when you want to grow you simply grow out but what happens when you’re in the middle of the city you grow up but wait there’s yet another option expand outside of germany altogether mercedes-benz has announced they’re gonna build a 500 million dollar factory in charleston south carolina this 200 acre site is going to be solely dedicated to sprinter
Production now what we’re showing you here is footage from the factory in disel daf but what they’re gonna do is duplicate the assembly line the paint shop the body shop here in south carolina now let’s take a look at the landscape here so you’re gonna have this facility in charleston if you go across the state in spartanburg bmw has a facility then you go across
State lines mercedes-benz has been manufacturing the ml since like the late 90s and now just added the c-class and vance alabama and that’s not even taking into account all the suppliers that feed these different facilities so back to charleston if you take into account the mercedes facility and the suppliers it’s going to add 1300 jobs to the region gotta test
This again because doesn’t have the same result as the gl does granite’s a much bigger vehicle ramming speed 90 100 fans dead ahead 105 it minimizes the disturbance rather than keep you from the other lane it’s the only flirt with the lane you don’t really go into the other way this is the old bad no-win system hopefully doesn’t kill me now new vehicle win system
Hopefully he doesn’t kill me do you guys remember our cla 250 episode with mercedes-benz usa ceo and us army ranger steve cannon well here’s a behind-the-scenes look at steve’s very unique relationship with the sprinter so basically you’re hanging with gen y now we’re trying to make sure we’re building you personally we’re hanging john why i’m surrounded i’ve got
So many gen wires that are my children that i’ve got i live a focus group every day of my life yeah so and your company car still the sprinter yeah my company car is yeah it’s the only one that can so now we know why you really have the job because you want this printer that’s right yeah okay i love this so steve brings up a really good point the sprinter albeit
In extreme cases can be a very interesting family car as well as a commercial vehicle so if you had seven plus kids to cart around what would your vehicle of choice be a nissan nv a chevy express gmc savana the new ford transit ram promaster or something else entirely let us know in the comments below or via our social media motorman tv all one-word motoman tv
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Transcribed from video
2015 Mercedes Benz Sprinter with Crosswind Assist FIRST DRIVE REVIEW & Factory Behind the Scenes By MotoManTV