Self Driving LS 600h Spied in Michigan

Now this is interesting. Left Lane New caught this Ls 600hL decked out in sensors and a tech in Michigan. We’ve seen Lexus’ with similar apparatuses before, but those were owned by Google. Now that Toyota is doing it themselves, I guess we can expect to see this tech further down the road.

Automation is hardly new territory for Lexus. Lane assist, automatic parking, adaptive cruise control, et cetera, are all things you can expect to aid your driving experience in a new Lexus. For the most part, they’re welcome aids that don’t really get in the way of your everyday driving experience, but can be useful in situations like parallel parking. As much as I enjoy that particular activity, I wouldn’t be bothered one bit by never having to do it ever again.

In the future, I imagine there will people who feel the same way about the entire driving experience. While those people will certain enjoy a future of autonomous cars, I imagine the technology will be used situationally. Like in gridlocked traffic. Or on a long road trip. Both situations don’t really require race-driver level amounts of focus and could easily be handled by a computer.

That doesn’t mean you should take a nap and leave your road-trip in the hands of your cars computer, nor does it mean that it’ll suddenly be acceptable to get wasted and trust the car to drive you home. In the real world, both of these things happen anyway. Having a computer there to help can only be a benefit for the dozing driver or the accidental drunk.

Anyway you cut it, the tech is cool. Lexus building a system of their own is proof positive that they’re heavily invested in the technology. I think that’s a good thing.

via [LeftLaneNews]