Toyota has taken a lot of heat in the past couple of years over safety issues, especially in North America. But last January, the Japanese company announced that it will invest $50 million over five years in its Collaborative Research Safety Center (CRSC) to develop new safety technologies.
Recently, Toyota Motor Sales USA organized a Safety Seminar in which it displayed the technologies developed by the CRSC and its partners while also announcing plans to launch 10 new research initiatives with leading US universities and institutions.
One of the initiatives is a solution to the danger electric cars pose to pedestrians who will not hear them, since unlike conventional cars powered by internal combustion engines, they are silent.
Toyota’s proposal is a synthetic motor sound alert that makes a humming sound that raises its pitch under acceleration and lowers it under braking, warning not only pedestrians but also bicyclists of the car’s presence on the road.
This system will equip the Prius line-up, the new RAV4 EV that was developed jointly with Tesla Motors, as well as other Toyota hybrids and EVs.
The Japanese manufacturer also demonstrated an autonomous-driving Lexus LS600h, which thanks to its advanced hardware and software, can detect pedestrians.
In addition, the company demonstrated a 35 mph head-on barrier crash test of its brand new Camry mid-size sedan, which sports 10 airbags and Toyota expects will earn top marks for safety both by the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) as well as the IIHS (Insurance Institure for Highway Safety).
“The CSRC intends to publish as much of the research of its partnerships as possible to make it available to federal agencies, the industry and academia”, said CSRC’s director and Toyota Technical Center’s senior executive engineer Chuck Gulash.
Story sources: Toyota & Motor Trend
