A Daimler AG Smart Vision EQ fortwo electric autonomous self-driving concept automobile sits on stage during the first media preview day of the IAA Frankfurt Motor Show in Frankfurt, Germany, on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017. The 67th IAA opens to the public on Sept. 14 and features must-have vehicles and motoring technology from over 1,000 exhibitors in a space equivalent to 33 soccer fields. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
In a musical fantasy for Daimler AG’s Smart brand, performers at the Frankfurt motor show this week literally sang out the virtues of an autonomous two-seater, with the spectacle suggesting there’s more fiction than fact in robo-cars.
Smart’s cornball song-and-dance number highlighted how self-driving features were largely relegated to a sideshow in Frankfurt. Volkswagen AG’s chief executive officer Matthias Mueller arrived at a presentation at Europe’s biggest auto show this year in a boxy self-driving bus, dubbed Sedric, and then largely ignored the technology as he laid out the German automaker’s electric-car plans.
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