Toyota Developing Virtual Co-Pilots, Not Driverless Vehicles

In a display that showed Toyota has a slightly different view of how technology should assist drivers and passengers, Toyota put on a show at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. There, Toyota showed off a Lexus that had been fitted with sensors to assist drivers with traffic, surroundings, and other information that would help someone make better, safer decisions behind the wheel.

"For Toyota and Lexus, an autonomous vehicle does not translate to a driverless vehicle, but rather a car equipped with an intelligent, always-attentive copilot whose skills contribute to safer driving," Mark Templin, head of U.S. sales for Lexus, said Tuesday at a show presentation. "The driver must be fully engaged."

In an industry where it seems many automakers (and at least one internet conglomerate) is heading the way of the driverless vehicle, it is refreshing to see that Toyota doesn’t believe driverless vehicles are the only futuristic option. In fact, it also makes great business sense, too, as there seems to be a significant population of consumers who are wary of the driverless vehicle. Perhaps, Toyota's innovation and philosophy of autonomous vehicles is really the way of the future…or at least another idea to give  drivers of the future more options.

As mentioned in this article, Toyota has no plans to sell a driverless vehicle right now. All of its investments of energy and money are going into creating virtual co-pilots that “aid driver awareness of traffic conditions, enabling motorists to make better decisions and improve driving skills.”

"We have a different philosophy than other people who are doing autonomous car projects," Templin said in an interview Sunday. "We believe the technology should make the driver better and that it should not be a driverless car."

So what do you think of Toyota’s autonomous vehicle philosophy? Is it smart to develop a virtual copilots to assist humans behind the wheel instead of driverless vehicles? Would you be more comfortable in a Toyota with a copilot or sitting in the passenger seat of a driverless car? Leave a comment below!