How Mercedes Invented the 'Invisible' Car (VIDEO)

Recently, Mercedes came out with a very ingenious advertising campaign to promote their new hydrogen-powered Mercedes-Benz F-Cell vehicle in Germany. They made the car Invisible to elaborate upon its concept of 0.0 emissions, which entails as invisible to the environment.

How did the company make the vehicle invisible? Technology experts at Mercedes achieved this feat by using their optical camouflage expertise to cover the driver's side of the car with mats of LEDs and mounted a video recording Canon 5D Mark II camera on the opposite side of the vehicle.

As a result, they were able to simultaneously capture footage on one side of the car and display it on the other end, which in turn rendered the vehicle nearly invisible from the sides. And the reaction of the German public can be seen in the video here:

This inventive concept was originally founded by scientists at the University of Tokyo, which works on the same principles of the blue screen used by TV weather forecasters and Hollywood filmmakers.

Further, the idea is also similar to the iPad2 Halloween costume that appears to display a gaping hole in the human body.

According to a Mashable report, Mercedes has claimed that their hydrogen-powered F-Cell series is ready for series production. However, other reports say it will be available for sale only by 2014.

Meanwhile, fuel-cell technology is still extremely costly, fairly because hydrogen is a difficult fuel to store and transport. And the stuff and resources required to create a successful fuel-cell car are still oscillating at a much higher price level.