The Lexus LS “Smart Car” Parallel Parks All By Itself!
Hate parallel parking? Then buy a new Lexus LS. Toyota has developed what it calls the APGS (Advanced Parking Guidance System). It’s a new feature on the 2007 Lexus LS and it’s also available on Toyota’s second generation Prius hybrids in Japan. See the APGS in action.
This cool technology is the first available product that starts to measure up to all those sci-fi movies set in the future where our cars will just drive themselves. It’s crossing the line where simple cruise control ends and real life auto-pilot begins. It also gives us an idea about how completely computer controlled cars will evolve. The answer is … slowly and carefully. But it probably won’t be too many years before more automatic driving features start to come out.
How the APGS works is really simple
You pull the car up beside and in front of the parking space you want to get in to just as you normally would. You have to do this slowly (under 12 mph) so the sonar sensors on the car can properly map out the parked cars and the parking space in between them. Then you put the car into reverse and activate the parking button on the dashboard screen. A view from the backup camera is also shown on the screen. As you control the brake, the car steers itself and backs into the spot and then alerts once parking is complete.
There are safety features on the APGS too
- The parking space has to be large enough for the car to manouver itself properly or the system will not engage
- If you touch the steering wheel or the gas pedal while the car is parking itself, then the automated system disengages, giving you manual control
- The APGS will also shut off if the car starts travelling faster than 2.5 mph
What the future holds
A system like APGS could eventually be programmed to drive your car into an available parking stall at a multilevel parking garage. You would just drop your car off at the front gate. The garage would use wireless networking to feed your car the instructions it needs after assigning it a parking spot. When you returned to pick up your car, the garage would signal it to drive out to the front gate to meet you.
And after the smart car parkade, the technology could go a step further with the smart cars only lane on the highway, similar to the HOV lanes we have now for buses and car poolers only. Smart cars could also slow down automatically and keep their sensors alert through school and hospital zones.
However the future unfolds, there are lots of opportunities to gradually roll out better and better features as cars get smarter and there are more of them on the road.
