Honda And Toyota Under The Gun As Germans Accelerate Away With Automated Driving Technologies

The management at Toyota and Honda are so full of it "we have not been as out front as others with P.R., but we've had this technology since the 90's" B.S.

As soon as Mercedes lifted patents on autonomous braking, Honda and Toyota proudly displayed the technology in their ads. As soon as they found a more cost effective way to introduce the self steer option on their vehicles from Mercedes they will hit the campaign trail hard again.

Innovation is not the Japanese makers strong suit, reliability and affordability is.

In fact I remember reading an article in the late 90's about Honda studying the ability of the common cockroach to not get squished by a boot and thinking 'wow that's amazing'...actually studying the senses of one the most adaptive surviving species on the planet, very innovative - so yes they have been researching and developing in this field for a long time...

From Forbes:

"In the mid-1990s Honda studied the cockroach to try to understand how it escaped danger. No safety technology was developed as a result, but Honda began to understand the importance of sensors."

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/112.html

Wow, cockroaches huh..., Mercedes also studied several species in the 90's including human beings but there's actually resulted in one of the most innovative safety systems to date, pre-safe, which has been out for over a decade now.

They studied how humans and most species react to danger before initial impact- fight or flight- how humans braced themselves before falling or receiving an impact, tightening up, pulling in our arms and legs, and bracing ourselves.

This inspired Pre-Safe, a system now standard in amost every Mercedes model, tightens seatbelts, closes windows, and adjust seats to the best position for a crash if a significant amount of body roll, wheel skidding, and abrupt steering/braking happens before a crash...

Innovation unlike any other

Who writes this crap ?
I watched NHK 4 year ago, they were showing Priuses self driving. Yes the Japanese have bee researching and developing self driving cars, but they have not made a song and dance about it. Their current aim to to develop technology that assists the driver. Imagine if it was fully automated and and pops the 'blue screen of death' game over !

Lets go back to the Hybrid, Toyota and Honda release hybruds cars, now the Germans are jumping onto the babnd wagon especially VW..

Uh yea, Honda did more than just study cockroaches, that was just an example of them thinking outside the box...

Mercedes makes some fine cars...except they are fat porkers...oh and my parents first gen ML, that plasticky piece of garbage sure was made unlike any other for sure all right!

My point still stands - Honda WAS researching these technologies in the 90's...

And they're behind now so what is your point?

Both Toyota and Honda companies boast of a lineup of eco-friendly and fuel-efficient vehicles. But what drives both these car companies to these heights is competition.