Be Careful When You Say "Mercedes" In the New Mercedes A-Class

From Road & Track

The 2019 Mercedes-Benz A-Class debuted a new infotainment system called MBUX that offers advanced voice-control functionality. Think of it as Merc's version of Alexa or Siri, and like those digital assistants from Amazon and Apple, you activate it by saying a simple voice command. In this case, it's "Hey Mercedes."

This makes sense, since you are essentially asking the car to do something for you. An example: The prompt "Hey Mercedes, I'm cold," will lead the car to turn the HVAC temperature up. When you ask something of a person, you address them by name, so why wouldn't you address your car by name too? It seems obvious.

But Drew Stearne over at Carfection discovered a flaw-it also seems to activate when you just say "Mercedes." For Stearne, this makes reviewing the A-Class on camera an exercise in frustration. Most people buying the new A-Class probably aren't talking to camera about their car, but, there's at least a decent chance they might say the word "Mercedes" from time to time. And here at R&T, we're curious if the system will activate if the word "Mercedes" is mentioned in a song, which could be a huge problem for Janis Joplin fans.

We also imagine this will cause trouble for anyone named Mercedes. Just ask Alexa Seary how that feels.

We've reached out to Mercedes to see if you can change the phrase that MBUX reacts to.

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