Mercedes Let Us Take a 360-Degree Photo From Inside Its New Concept Car

Here's something you probably didn't expect to see today: a 360-degree photo from the interior of a new Mercedes concept car that's being shown off at CES, which Mercedes allowed me to take after some convincing. ("It's a photo, just in 360 degrees…) You have to click here to view the photo since the embed code doesn't appear to work unfortunately.

Mercedes calls the vehicle the IAA Concept, and it's designed to showcase a few new technologies the German automaker has up its sleeves that may one day make it to actual production vehicles.

Among these are a digital rearview mirror system (pictured above) that replaces traditional side mirrors with cameras—cameras whose images are then shown on the rearview mirror. Mercedes told me that this was implemented to reduce drag to improve the car's aerodynamics, but also cautioned that regulators may take some convincing to approve a car without side mirrors.

Mercedes has also implemented two BlackBerry-like touchpads (above) on either side of the steering wheel to let drivers access common functions such as satnav without having to remove their hands from the steering wheel.

Towards the end of my chat with Mercedes, things naturally progressed to autonomous driving. The company told me that it suspects the technology for autonomous driving will be ready by 2020, but that regulators worldwide may take some further time to actually approve its widespread use—just as I had predicted when questioned by Motherboard UK Editor Vicki Turk earlier this month.