The Soul Of A New Mercedes

Car buyers everywhere are spurning gas guzzlers, and some carmakers feel the pain more than others. Take Mercedes-Benz, long known for its luxury cars - its flagship S-Class is a full-size sedan that starts at around US $90,000. Without sacrificing performance or comfort, the company must meet the expectations of its increasingly environmentally conscious customers. Mercedes, a division of Daimler, has ingeniously applied technology to come up with a stunning solution. It's the F700 research car, which debuted last year. The F700 was created to give customers a preview of what they might expect from an S-Class sedan 10 years from now. The interior is hugely spacious, modern, and filled with electronics; the exterior is shiny and sleek, a dramatic evolution from Mercedes's current upright look. The car is also fast: it goes from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour in 7.5 seconds.