Sports car advertisers usually croon about the excellence, elegance, and implied ability of their car to let you triumph over your neighbors. Mercedes-Benz’s latest E-Class series of luxury sedans is instead advertising how much legal strategizing went into their cars.
“To hold a patent that has changed the modern would define you as an innovator,” the commercial voice dramatizes. “To hold more than one patent of this caliber would define you as a true leader. To hold over 80,000…well, that would make you the creators of the 2012 Mercedes Benz E-Class.”
With the standard commercial logic of MORE = BETTER, the commercial is putting the accent on their IP portfolio.
The E-series was named, belatedly, for a fuel injection innovation — “Einspritzmotor” — invented in the 1950s, which now comes standard on all their cars. The ‘E-class’ name was first assigned to their 1994 line, when Mercedes changed their notation system from naming their cars the 400E/500E to the E420/E500.
The series is Benz’s most important line of vehicles. Among the patents applied to the 2012 series, which will carry on into their 2014 lines, which it is calling its “Real Design Revolution,” most of the changes in the vehicle regard luxury items such as improved night vision assistance that detects animals in the road, a dynamic light assistant that prevents oncoming drivers from being blinded, intelligent lane assistance that warns you if other drivers are shifting lanes without seeing you, and a stereo camera that sets dampers based on the driving conditions.
The 5.5 – liter V-8 in the E63 AMG, however, is carrying over its patent, though some of the other models will get engine upgrades.
The Mercedes in the commercial cruises an empty scenic road and is trailed by a tornado of its 80,000 patents. Perhaps the designers wanted to enhance their selling power with all the legal work that went into their new line.