Mercedes-Benz doesn’t want you to think of its business of building and selling commercial vans as a boring, unglamorous corner of its auto-manufacturing empire?albeit one that saw revenue (that old-fashioned metric of business success) increase by 19 percent in the first half of the year, to ?6.256 billion. Instead, it wants you to see its vans as a futuristic business platform solution, part of the internet of things. And so it created the Vision Van concept, an all-electric van that’s so forward-thinking it comes with its own drones!

Following Mercedes-Benz?s recent concept trend of making simple silver futurepods such as the F 015 and the Vision Tokyo, the Vision Van is part of the company’s “adVANce” initiative (get it") that will see its motorized metal boxes evolve into integral cogs in the intelligent, connected, smart-delivery system that the future demands. As part of the effort, the company claims to be working on technology that will allow vehicles in the field to continually report their location and the status of the parcels on board, and to receive change instructions from a centralized home base. The company also is exploring changes to its current sales/leasing business model, with a possible move into vehicle sharing and/or short-term, as-needed rentals.
As for the Vision Van itself, its vast acreage of silver, bulbous sheetmetal is punctuated by futuristic design cues such as blue accent lighting along the lower bo...