Toyota Cautious About Timetable for Fully Automated Cars

Toyota Motor Corp. says it will equip its vehicles with driver aids but is in no rush to embrace fully self-driving vehicles.

Gill Pratt, who heads the Toyota Research Institute, tells attendees at CES in Las Vegas that no carmaker or software developer is close to delivering true “level 5” autonomy, in which the vehicle can drive itself under any traffic situation that a human could handle.

Even today’s advanced systems assume the driver will be ready to resume control at any moment. Critics, who complain that carmakers have been unrealistically optimistic about automated cars, consider Toyota’s assessment refreshingly realistic.

Pratt points out that the public shrugs off tens of thousands of traffic fatalities that occur today among human-piloted vehicles. But he doubts consumers would tolerate anything less than almost zero fatalities involving cars controlled by computers. Achieving that level of perfection will take years of additional testing and system refinements, he asserts.

Pratt says today’s systems, which enable self-driving operation under certain circumstances, illustrate level 2 autonomy. He suspects carmakers may jump from there directly to level 4, in which vehicles take full control—but only on roads that were specifically designed for autonomous vehicles.