Self-Parking Car Available In Japan

sinjayde writes "Yahoo!/Reuters is reporting that Toyota has released a car for sale in Japan that is able to park itself: 'Toyota's new hybrid gasoline-electric Prius sedan uses electrically operated power steering and sensors that help guide the car when reversing into parking spaces.'" No need to rely on the reverse parking formula anymore?

BBC Story

[Arc04]

Here is the BBC's take [bbc.co.uk] on the same story.

The technology for this was shown off months ago - I saw the story. I am glad it is finally being released to the public.

bigger engine and motor

[evenprime]

I'm more impressed by the fact that the engine in the new prius is now 78 horsepower(it used to be 70 hp) and the motor is 50kW/67hp (it used to be 44 hp).

Toyota did the right thing. The new prius is bigger than the old one (now a midsize, not a compact), has fewer emissions, more horsepower, and accelerates faster. Now, if they could only make it cheaper, too....

Re:driving test.

[bersl2]

sell driving lesson school for people who are afraid to parallel park on driving test. with the promise they can use car on the test.

In some states, it is no longer a requirement to know how to parallel park in order to get a license. Therefore, even though I've been driving for two years, I still can't parallel park.

Sad but true.

Re:Wrong place for intelligence

[mosch]

the first one exists [stopdwi.com].

Re:I won't give up Stick!

[aashenfe]

Unless my next car has a CVT. The Toyota Prius is actualy looking pretty goot at this point.
Why are Ford and GM so far behind? They don't have CVT's. They are just talking about Hybrids, I'm not holding my breath.
Toyota and Honda have had Hybrid's and CVT transmisions for years now.

Re:I won't give up Stick!

[HTMLSpinnr]

It's not a true CVT, but an E-CVT, because there are no varying gear ratios to change torque multiplication. The car has one single speed and engine torque output to the wheels is varied by resistance on an electric generator. This is driven through a pretty slick planetary gearset which gets the job done. Gobs of electric motor torque takes care of slow speed starts so that the car performs somewhat like an ordinary car.

I know. I own a 2002 Prius, and have ordered the 2004 (too bad they don't have self parking here in the States).

Go see the article on How Hybrids Work at howstuffworks.com

Re:Glad to see they put this in a hybird car.

[thefultonhow]

Why don't they have cars that drive themselves on the interstate? Actually, 5 or 6 years ago there was a pilot program where they deployed magnets in 13 miles of California freeway and equipped Buicks (yeah... go figure...) to do the whole automated driving thing. But that never got any farther than those 13 miles, as far as I know. Why?

Well, I'd have to guess it's a similar reason why we never converted to the Metric system--infrastructure problems. Simply put, there are far too many miles of highway (46,000-somthing at last count [dot.gov]), far too many sensors per mile, and far too few tax dollars to spend on the project. It was the same thing with Metric in the 70s--the government said we'd be metric in five years, only to find out the hard way that there were too many miles of freeway, too many die changes, too much opposition from corporations... you get the idea.