Fully AUTONOMOUS Lexus LS hits Europe’s roads

Lexus are spending the next year taking an autonomous Lexus LS round the streets of Brussels, following similar outings in the US and Japan.

How far off are autonomous cars? Well, that’s a bit of a ‘piece of string’ question, but we are likely to see autonomous cars arrive first in cities which are fully mapped and geofenced, rather than seeing cars which can actually drive you anywhere you want.

But that autonomous future is coming, and car makers are busy testing their autonomous gubbins as the technology advances quickly, and Toyota are now ready to test their Autonomous Driving (AD) technology on public roads in Europe.

Following similar test in Japan and the US, Toyota will now spend the next 13 months driving round the streets of Brussels to see how their AD technology performs in the real world, and reacts to the unpredictable – humans, in particular.

That means an array of sensors bolted to the roof of the Lexus – including LIDAR, Radar, Cameras and high-precision positioning –  a ‘driver’ behind the wheel in case it all goes a bit Pete Tong, and a techie to monitor the performance.

Gerard Killmann, Toyota R&D VP Europe, said:

Responding to the complexity and diverse population of an urban environment like Brussels – the European capital and home to citizens of 184 different nationalities – is key to understanding human behaviour. After successful trials on public roads in Japan and the US, we are now adding European conditions to the technology’s understanding.

If you happen to be in Brussels in the next year, we don’t think you’ll have any trouble identifying Lexus’s AD-equipped car.