The best consumer concept we saw at CES 2019
- Business Insider scoured the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to find the very best cutting-edge tech.
- The best consumer concept we saw at the show was Mercedez-Benz's futuristic concept car, the Urbanetic.
- The Urbanetic is a self-driving, fully electric vehicle where you can switch out the body on top of the chassis depending on your needs.
LAS VEGAS — The Consumer Electronics Show is home to thousands of concepts and futuristic designs that will never see the light of day.
But if there's one concept that we really hope makes it to consumers, it's the Urbanetic concept car from Mercedez-Benz.
At CES 2019, it was nearly impossible to get a great view of the Urbanetic, since dozens of people were standing around it to take pictures at any given time. But its popularity was warranted: The Urbanetic is Mercedez-Benz's vision for the future of transportation, where cars are fully autonomous and electric, but also fully modular.
Mercedez-Benz envisions the Urbanetic being a people-mover during rush hours, but a cargo vehicle during other hours.
The Urbanetic can hold up to 12 people, but if you switch out the body on top of the chassis, the Urbanetic can become a goods transporter, which can support around 550 pounds of whatever you're hauling.
Best of all, the Urbanetic is efficient: Mercedez-Benz claims the car has zero emissions, and learns the best routes and systems over time thanks to its self-learning infrastructure, which communicates with other cars within the fleet to navigate traffic in real-time as quickly as possible.
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