A simple can of soda can make your Merc S Class semi-autonomous: here’s how

We love a good car hack here at Motorburn. We think it shows a pretty impressive level of ingenuity to take a look at a piece of emerging technology and think “I could do the same thing with a roll of duct tape, some LED bulbs and a soldering iron”. Sometimes though the hacks aren’t quite so complex.

Take your average Mercedes S Class for instance. It turns out all you need to make it semi-autonomous is a load of tape and a (full) can of soda. It might sound bizarre, until you think about it for a moment. The only thing really stopping the current crop of models from being semi-autonomous is regulation.

It can, after all, keep you in your lane at speed and its various cameras and sensors work together to make sure you keep a safe distance from the car in front of you. Take your hands off the wheel though and the car will start beeping at you, before eventually shutting down.

Given that the steering wheel sensors are weight-based, it didn’t take too much effort figure out what it would require to make the car truly hands free.

Check it out:

If you insist on using this hack though, please don’t fall asleep at the wheel.