As of September, the company has registered five autonomous vehicles with the California DMV. Unlike Google and Tesla, these autonomous Mercedes cars do not share visual data across the fleet. The tech isn’t there yet, said Axel Gern, who leads Mercedes’ self-driving initiative in North America. But Mercedes did get a boost from the Here maps, which Daimler bought with two other German carmakers from Nokia this summer. With the maps, Mercedes’ self-driving cars have a clearer indication of the physical realities on the road, said Gern.