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Toyota has unveiled what it calls the world's most true-to-life driving simulator to help it develop new safety features and reach its ultimate goal of eliminating all traffic deaths.
In a demonstration of its latest safety technologies at its Higashifuji Technical Centre near Mt Fuji, south of Tokyo, the world's biggest carmaker says its new facility creates a virtual environment to analyse driving characteristics under various conditions such as drunkenness and drowsiness.
The warehouse-sized structure features a dome-shaped pod, perched atop a turntable, on a track that slides in all four directions at angles of up to 25 degrees to mimic the sensation of accelerating, braking and turning in different directions.
The 4.5-metre-tall, 7.1-metre wide pod can contain any car model and is lined on the inside with a screen that shows a moving, wrap-around view of the surrounding environment, giving the driver and passengers the illusion of moving on the road.
Big carmakers such as Daimler and Honda have similar simulators, but Toyota's is the first to move laterally and has the longest range of 35 metres front to back and 20 metres from right to left, engineers say.
"It still needs some fine tuning, but we aim to start putting it to use in earnest from next April," said Takashi Yonekawa, a senior staff engineer at the centre.
For the first time since the facility's completion in September, Toyota allowed reporters into the pod, also visible through a glass pane from an adjacent room.
The moving graphics, a true-to-life representation of 64km of road in a six-square-kilometre section of the surrounding region, were real enough to make spectators feel queasy even when the pod was stationary.
The system will be used to analyse driver behaviour under different conditions to gauge what type of safety functions will be useful to reduce accidents in future cars, engineers say.
Toyota also demonstrated safety technology based on intelligent transport systems (ITS), a safety system using global positioning system receivers and sensors to allow communication between cars and road infrastructure, pedestrians or other cars in an effort to avoid collisions.
Domestic rivals Honda and Nissan are also working on similar technology and the three carmakers plan to test the technology collectively sometime next year, says Toyota managing officer Takashi Shigematsu.
Top carmakers are competing to develop cutting-edge safety technology also as a tool to lure customers with value-added features.
Toyota has introduced its newest technology in high-end models such as the Lexus LS460 sedan, which it equipped with a pedestrian detection system last year.
Once the infrastructure is in place, new ITS-based safety features would be able to warn drivers when they are about to run a red light or stop sign, even braking automatically, or alert them of approaching pedestrians or cars in blind spots.
The technology will be available across the Toyota range, including high-performance models. Toyota is likely to replace the discontinued Celica sports car with a go-fast model aimed initially at Europe.
The new car is one reason why Toyota doesn't want a maximum speed limit on Germany's autobahns.
"Being able to drive without restrictions on the autobahns is the unique selling point for Germany," says Markus Schrick, vice-president of Toyota Deutschland.
Schrick said a speed limit would do little to reduce CO2 emissions. Toyota plans to introduce a replacement for the Celica sport coupe in Europe in 2009. It stopped selling the car in 2005.
The new car is part of a plan for sportier models. The Lexus IS-F, which will be introduced in March 2008, will become the company's flagship model.
The car will have a top speed of 270km/h rather than the traditional 250km/h. Lexus also will introduce a new sports car in 2009 based on the LF-A concept.
The sports models are designed to raise awareness of Lexus in Germany. Plans to boost annual German sales of Lexus cars to 10,000 by 2010 have now been pushed back.
