In an industry that is fanatical about branding individual in-car features, it’s easy to miss the bigger picture. Take, for example, the new Mercedes-Benz E-class, which christens its technologies with a jumble of cryptic capital-letter phrases such as Distance Pilot Distronic, Air Body Control, and Pre-Safe Impulse. But once bundled together and distilled to a single theme, the E’s safety, connectivity, and semi-autonomous technologies make for a concise story. The E-class is a smart little car, indeed, much more so than the Smart, the twee city cart that’s also built by Daimler-Benz.
This new E is a car for an age of smart devices, in which fridges alert you to milk gone bad and toilets text you when they need cleaning. Nine years ago, Mercedes introduced Attention Assist, an algorithm…