Park Assist Gives It A Whirl
The Age
Thursday August 21, 2003
Coming soon to a kerb near you - the car that parks itself. And we've driven it.
Despite all the fancy drivetrain electronics in the second-generation Prius, its most impressive feature is its ability to park itself.
The world-first "parking assistance" system took three years to develop and will be the centrepiece of the Prius's advanced technology when it is offered as a $3000 option in Japan from late next month.
Using a rear-mounted camera - which projects on to a screen on the dash - a computer determines the size of a parking spot and calculates whether the 4.445-metre-long Prius will fit in.
Just pull up next to a parking spot, press the parking assist button to the left of the steering wheel, and wait a second or two for the car to do some thinking.
The advanced computer program then takes control of the steering wheel, twiddling it left then right. All the driver does is monitor braking.
All the while, the rear view is projected on to the colour TV screen, and computer-generated graphics mark out the parking space and turn green or red depending on whether the car will fit.
There's even a virtual marker post noted as the point the car will begin to turn in.
If someone touches the wheel in the middle of the process, full control is returned to the driver.
However, chief engineer of the Prius project, Masahiro Inoue, stresses that the Prius's parking system is an assistance feature only.
We trialled the system in Japan recently and came away thoroughly impressed. On six or so attempts it missed the cars it was parking between and also left a perfect gap to the gutter - or white line, as it was on this occasion. Perfect for saving embarrassment when rushing a reverse park in traffic.
But don't go getting excited about perfect reverse parks just yet, because the park assist function will not be available in Australia - for now at least. Toyota Australia says there are no plans to sell the feature on Priuses sold here, as it is not available for export markets and the $3000 cost would be prohibitive.
However, just as airbags, anti-lock brakes and active cruise control systems are flowing down from image-leading models to high-volume cars, parking assist systems will undoubtedly work their way down the motoring chain.
Already there's a parking assistance feature available on Toyota Prados sold in Japan, but it's not as advanced as the system in the Prius, which basically does all the hard work.
Toyota isn't saying anything, but engineers smile when the possibility of such systems arriving in other models is mentioned.
"Each chief engineer for (certain) vehicles decides to put it in or not," says Inoue.
Luxury cars would be the most obvious first choice, and Toyota's Lexus is believed to be keen to adopt the technology as a point of difference between German competitors such as BMW and Mercedes.
And the limits of the technology appear boundless at this point, with Toyota already hinting the cameras and computers are capable of driving the car itself - keeping it within the lane and away from other vehicles.
"It recognises the white lines, so technically we can do that," says Inoue. "But at the same time we have several issues to avoid when it comes to drivers. We have to overcome those situations."
© 2003 The Age