Commercial vehicle / minibus pairing is a common solution in the automotive industry, but Mercedes is screwing the idea. The Urbanetics bundle offers a completely unique bodywork for passenger and freight transport, but the two superstructures are based on a shared self-propelled platform.
The space saving of electric vehicles is demonstrated by the fact that within a 5.1 m vehicle there is a useful transport surface of 3.7 m; the 10 cubic meter space can be split horizontally so you can transport up to 10 EUR pallets. The bus version can carry 12 people at once.
Vehicle control is also novel by Mercedes: the control panel is constantly monitoring the infrastructure and if it detects that a person in the area has gathered a lot of people traveling, they can send one or more vehicles to their service. So there is no need for a timetable, public transport can be implemented on demand. Automated or manual interchange of networked vehicles communicating with each other, the operation takes only a few minutes in principle.
The vehicle detects people not only around the environment, but also through the nose display and nurses them to see and watch the pedestrians.
(Source: vezess.hu / photo: Mercedes-Benz, autocar.co.uk)