Toyota in race to develop self-driving cars

Toyota has been a relative latecomer to the push to design automated automobiles. Toyota believes that mobility should mean safety, efficiency and freedom, and is ramping up its research into and development of automated driving technologies, with the goal of launching products based on Highway Teammate by around 2020. The technology had previously been referred to as “advanced driver support”.

The company claims that by equipping ITS Connect on these three models it will make Toyota the world’s first automaker to bring a driver assist function that uses a dedicated ITS frequency to market.

But he acknowledged that the technology was not yet ready to be used on roads with pedestrians and bicyclists.

To Google, Apple, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and any other automaker that plans to be in the autonomous vehicle market…Toyota wants in. Both will be highlighted in the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show, which opens to the public later this month.

Google has been testing self-driving cars in Silicon Valley, while Nissan has vowed to put an automated auto on Japan’s highways as soon as 2016. The fourth-generation Prius hybrid, due for launch in Japan at year-end, will be among the three models, it said. It provides warning to the driver in the form of an image on the dashboard and a beeping sound. It is useful in alerting drivers to cars and pedestrians popping out from blind spots.

“We were afraid that by using the term ‘automated driving, ‘ people would misunderstand that humans are not involved at all”, Masahiro Iwasaki, an engineer working with the technology, told the Journal.

Toyota officials said the technology has tremendous potential to reduce accidents, although it is unlikely to have much of an effect in the beginning because the transmission sensors are installed in only 20 places, including 15 in Toyota’s headquarters area. In Japan, this kind of accident accounts for roughly 40 percent of all traffic accidents, Toyota says.