Daimler is set to profit from theBoston Marathon bombing drama in a strange way. The car hijacked by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a 2013 ML350 with an active telematics subscription. Mercedes-Benz USA confirmed to Automotive News [sub] that “it was contacted April 19 during the hunt for Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Mercedes was asked to help find the vehicle using the Stolen Vehicle Location Assistance function on the crossover’s mbrace telematics system.“
Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Steve Cannon could tweet: “Just found out that our mbrace2 technology in the stolen Mercedes helped locate the Boston terrorists! Thanks to our amazing law enforcement.”
The Mercedes is owned by a 26-year-old Chinese entrepreneur, who told the harrowing story of his abduction and escape to the Boston Globe.
And DB can now advertise that their vehicles are “bulletproof”!
So were these guys sub-prime buyers or did their KGB paychecks cover it?
I guess they should have held up someone in an old Cavalier. Those bombers weren’t too bright, especially with robbing a 7-11 for no apparent reason and then hiding in a boat. Hopefully the one that’s alive gets equal punishment to what he caused to the victims.
They didn’t actually rob the 7/11; that was just some amazing reporting by our spot-on mainstream media.
You got it wrong, the KGB would LOVE to get their hands on that guy, hell, I’d bet Putin himself would pull the trigger. It was Russia that asked us to investigate him, maybe if we had listened a litte bit more, him and the rest of his family would have been deported and this wouldn’t have happened.
Dig deeper.
http://www.financialsensearchive DOT com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2002/0716.html
https://en.wikipedia DOT org/wiki/Explanation_attempts_for_the_Russian_apartment_bombings
No Onstar love? GM must be gnashing its teeth over this.
If thier technology helped to stop these savages before they killed, or maimed anybody else,kudo go to Mercedes.
Err…wouldn’t LoJack have sufficed?
Well, for the paranoid customer, this isn’t a selling point. There are people who avoid GM because Onstar makes them feel like they’re being watched/followed.
I know a guy with an old cell phone that does nothing but make phone calls, because he doesn’t want to be tracked. I’d say MB just got crossed off his list, but he drives pre-1996 cars because he thinks there’s something fishy about OBD-II. Another friend holds onto his 2004 Lesabre because he doesn’t trust the 2006 mandated tire pressure monitors.
Maybe MB can write off those customers as a very small market, but I’ve met so many such people that I suspect the paranoia market is larger than anyone thinks. Caveat: I live in Southern California.
You don’t have to get mbrace. You might have to special order the car if you don’t want it though. All cars that go to dealer stock usually have it.
if i have a date with real mercedes I wouldn’t wanna to drive a car only to tell where exactly i went earlier!
I love that the ML is now a Crossover. When it came out in 1997, all the way up through recently, it was firmly called an SUV (and was one of the first civilized SUVs to sport reasonably good off-road capability).
They were still body-on-frame until around 2005, IIRC. So I guess Crossover is more appropriate today, but I could see it either way.
i noticed in the movies that a lot of the bad guys drive mercedes, usually in black – i guess they attract a certain type of people
Yeah nah, Baddies are supposed to be driving the 3.4L Jaguar Mark II saloon. That my friend, is criminality with class.
And to think of all the hate that GM’s OnStar gets around here.
But Mercedes makes it coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool.
When I saw the headline I honestly thought the story was going to be the Mercedes broke down.
I guess if you’re a bad guy stay away from almost any GM product built in the last 10 years, Mercedes, BMW, and Acura.
I like that, I thought that the Mercedes broke down.
The stories I followed claimed that the cops found the car by locating the owner’s mobile phone which was left in the car.
+1
I get my news from the Daily Mail and the owner was quoted saying that he left his iPhone under the seat and notified police — and his belief was the iPhone.
Find my iPhone App works in a few seconds.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315706/Boston-bombings-Car-jacking-victim-left-iPhone-car-police-track-Tamerlan-Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev.html
Good thing it wasn’t a GM vehicle with OnStar location services. GM would have been assailed.
Great example of why I like new media so much more than old. Auto News broke this but the story is buried on their home page under the boring headline “M-B tech led cops to Boston suspects’ car”. The TTAC headline is more tantalizing, less stiff, and there is always a visual “appetizer” to go with the words. TTAC gives you a link to the Globe article which provided so much more to the story. Finally there are 20 so comments here and when I went back to AN to see how many they had (usually very few) I was told I needed a subscription!