“Mercedes-Benz Food Stamp” Writer Shows Complexity of Poverty

Writer Darlena Cunha, and her family

We are writing because two weeks ago an article appeared in The Washington Post about a woman’s struggle with becoming suddenly impoverished. This article was quickly shared throughout the Internet because there was something about the woman’s story that seemed unusual to people. We first noticed it when we saw dozens of retweets with the fetching headline, “This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps.” From a journalistic perspective, that’s a great hook.

We think that the article was popular because people could easily imagine it happening to them. Which is interesting because lots of people fantasize about being able to buy a Mercedes-Benz. This story took that visualization one step further by considering what happens if you “make it” but then lose it. It asked, “What would you do if your wages went down, your spouse lost his or her job, you gave birth to twins, the market gutted the value of your home, and the Mercedes-Benz was paid off?”

Plenty of people had opinions on whether the story’s author handled her life correctly. Right or wrong, thousands of people felt comfortable judging the story’s author. A lot of those opinions centered on the Mercedes-Benz and the house because they are signs of economic success. Many people thought the woman and her husband should sell both because they’re “luxury” items, which can be downgraded.

As the woman explained, weeks after purchasing the house, the market fell out, and to sell the house would be to assume an enormous amount of debt. The Mercedes-Benz was an older model which had also depreciated in value and had been paid off long, long ago. But because they are strong economic symbols, people rushed quickly to judgment, irrespective of facts below the symbolic level. People in the story, and those reading it, second-guessed the woman and her husband every step of the way because her appearance (nice house, nice car) didn’t match her reality (not being able to buy food, not being to find a job).

We would submit that poverty can be an incredibly nuanced concept. We usually hear “poverty” and jump straight to “lower class,” assuming that you’re already there, or that you should immediately start to look like what we imagine lower class looks like. This isn’t a very compassionate view, and in the wake of the economic turbulence of the Great Recession, we think it would behoove us all to be more flexible in our viewpoints and less hasty in our judgments. In short: Learn. Observe. Watch. Ask questions. Be helpful. Swallow advice. Everyone’s experience is different, even and especially those who look unusual, like a woman in a Mercedes-Benz picking up food stamps.

Billions of people walk this planet with their own unique challenges and circumstances. In many cases a lot of good can be done simply by asking to hear their stories. The whole point of this article’s widespread interest is that the woman’s story did not match what people imagined it would be. Doling out advice and judgment based on her appearance is the exact opposite of what people should be taking away, and yet, that’s what we’ve been witnessing. The next time you hear or read a story that excites you, pause—take a moment. Take a day or even two. We are willing to bet that that extra time will create empathy, which is one thing this woman and her family could have used more of.

2015 C-Class Gets Plug-In Hybrid Electric Version This Fall

The age-old balance between gasoline and electric cars is inching toward resolution. A new plug-in hybrid electric version of the C-Class is due to arrive in the U.S. this fall. Initial estimates say that the PHEV will have a 109 MPG equivalency. We say equivalency because PHEVs run on a mixture of gasoline and electricity, so we can’t evaluate things strictly by the gallon.

PHEVs represent the best of the gasoline and electric worlds. They have a gasoline engine and an electric motor. They can run just on electricity or just on gasoline. They use things like gravity, inertia, and momentum to power the car instead of insisting that fossil fuels burn at all times. They have the range of a gasoline vehicle with much better CO2 and pollutant levels. And when you need to floor it, you get the roar of a classic internal combustion engine.

In many cases, PHEVs can offer more power than equivalent vehicles through the instant response of electric acceleration and a higher combined horsepower. The 2015 PHEV C-Class will have a turbocharger for its 4-cylinder engine, which means it will get a boost in the higher RPMs. Assuming the battery is charged, you should receive a similar boost in the lower RPMs thanks to the electric motor.

We see this as a positive movement toward saving money at the pump, lowering our overall gasoline consumption, and expelling fewer pollutants into the world. Everyday more and more people are getting their driver’s licenses and owning their own cars. PHEVs are a great way to make sure that we keep the planet safe for ourselves and generations to come. The S-Class will soon get a PHEV version, as well.

We’ll be sure to let you know when we get our first models in here at Raleigh, and we would love for you to see for yourself what a PHEV is like.

MB Embraces Electric Vehicles, Millenials and Self-Driving Cars

Autonomous cars and Mercedes-Benz are a lot more closely related than you think. Features like Park Assist, Intelligent Drive, Blind Spot Assist and Lane Keeping Assist feel like incremental novelties when evaluated one-by-one. But consider them together and you actually have a vehicle that’s almost driving on its own entirely. The result is something that Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Steve Cannon sees as relatively simple:

“We already have an intelligent S-Class that can steer itself around curves. It monitors the blind spot, and it nudges you back into traffic. So all the building blocks are there, it’s just a question of time, legislation, and cost.”

Cost is closely related to time: reduce one and you’ll likely reduce the other. Cannon believes that 2025 is the magic number for commercial viability, although his definition of that last term (Is an S-Class commercially viable? E-Class? C?) is key. Still, it is impressive to hear about something that used to be the provenance of science fiction now spoken of casually by an automotive executive.

One reason for that optimism might be the successful launch of the B-Class this week in California. Electric vehicles have been the whipping boy of pundits, critics and analysts for years. Americans were said to be too in love with gasoline to consider the whisper-quiet rolling of an EV’s tires.

Then a little vehicle known as the Chevy Volt came along. Then the Nissan Leaf. Now with two EV’s on the market (the smart fortwo electric drive also debuted in the U.S. this year), Mercedes-Benz is bringing their trademark class to the evolving power lines of the industry.

Another mountain that Mercedes-Benz has traversed has less to do with technology as it does demographics. Millennials, the youngish generation to emerge from the beaches of the Great Recession with 1 trillion dollars in student loans and grim employment prospects, are famously just not that into buying new cars. Cannon’s solution? Price.

“First and foremost you need a vehicle package at a price point that’s relevant. If you want to build bridges to this generation, you have to build a product they can afford.”

That bridge, the CLA-Class, costs a little under $30,000, which is more attainable than many people would expect. It also reflects the expanding bounds of incomes in America: some people are making more, but a lot of people are making less.

These three ways that Mercedes-Benz is stretching itself—autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, and Millenial vehicles—exhibit clear attention to this market. We don’t know exactly if or how they will converge, but we are reminded of a quote by another CEO, Steve Jobs:

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”