Hacker News Reader

Comment by extesy | Hacker News Reader

Has Toyota ever demonstrated any real-world success in autonomous driving or they only have PR articles and marketing videos?

View on HN

They have demonstrated a lot of real-world success in building cars at scale and delivering new technologies to the market. They may be slower than other companies at innovating but when they do it's global and at significant scale.

Toyota manufacturing is where a lot of our best practices in shipping reliable software today came from.

I seriously doubt that given the horrendous state of their software as proven in the unintended acceleration cases.

You're getting downvotes but I don't see any links to examples of real-world Toyota autonomous driving.

Honestly I kind of feel like Toyota's still stuck in the 90s. They were ahead of the game but all they seem to have done since then is endlessly fine-tune and finesse the same vehicles.

'...but all they seem to have done since then is endlessly fine-tune and finesse the same vehicles.'

If only the other mainstream manufacturers would follow suit?

I love the 1GR-FE/5VZ-FE/2UZ-FE engines, I would just keep buying the same car with those. Except they last for hundreds of thousands of miles, so I might only need one other in my lifetime.

I just want a low km 2JZ-GTE so that when my 7M-GTE blows up again I have something better to replace it with. :)

The worst thing that stops me from even considering them is the absolutely attrocious and outdated infotainment and dashboard design. I drove a brand new Auris and Yaris recently and jesus, it felt like being in a car from 2004 - awful, slow touchscreens with animations straight from WindowsCE era, huge unnecessary buttons on the dash(why do you get the second/minute/hour buttons for setting the clock right on the top of the dash??? How many times in the lifetime of the vehicle are you going to use them? Why give them such a prominent place?). Even their most "futuristic" vehicles like the Prius feel extremely outdated inside.

True, they should stop being short sighted and get on board with CarPlay and Android Auto, but it's relatively simple to pop out the dashboard and put in an aftermarket $500 head unit. It is an added cost with installation of course, but I feel like it's worth it for the reliability and fixability of their reputable models.

What reason do you have to doubt the most successful automotive manufacturer on Earth?

They are publicly known to have shitty software and software practices from the testimony during the unintended acceleration trial.

I wouldn't bet against Toyota's engineers.

Why? They cant even make a sport car anymore, last one was 100% Subaru, and the new one will be BMW.

They're awful successful & have delivered on PR & hype in the past. It's always clear when its a concept (such as the hydrogen powered vehicles) or whether its for a consumer rollout.

They demonstrated autonomous parking in a Lexus back when that was somewhat novel, in 2005 or 2006.

That was the upgraded version :) the original came in the 2003 Prius Hybrid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Parking_Assist_Sys...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com