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The story
Toyota Motor Corporation announced that starting in 2028, it will equip production passenger cars with AI-powered self-driving technology that requires the driver to do almost no operating. In the 5ch Science News+ thread, many commenters questioned where liability would fall in an accident, whether insurance would even cover it, and how practical the system would really be on city streets shared with pedestrians and cyclists — while others voiced hope for the mobility support it could offer elderly drivers and the reduced hassle of parking. Opinion split over the gap between the pace of the technology and the state of the legal framework.
Toyota to Equip Production Cars with ‘Nearly Hands-Free’ Self-Driving Tech Starting 2028
Toyota Motor Corporation announced that starting in 2028, it will equip production passenger cars with self-driving technology that requires the driver to do almost no operating.
According to Toyota, the company plans to equip production cars with AI-based self-driving technology starting in 2028.
Source: nagoyatv.com / Original article here
What people said
This isn't something you can just bolt on afterward.
There's no way there's a budget for that.
Automatic braking isn't even mandatory yet.
Surely there was no self-driving back in 2000 — that was right when the first-gen Prius (the three-box one) had just come out.
Before we even get to the ratio of manual vs. self-driving cars, this is impossible even 50 years from now unless cars are completely separated from pedestrians and light vehicles like bikes.
As long as bicycles and e-scooters keep acting like they own the road the way they do now, there's a limit to what even a top-tier AI can predict.
On top of that, unless you ban vehicles from residential areas entirely, accidents where pedestrians get hit just won't go away.
It's probably meant to be used with a human as backup.
Full autonomy clearing the legal bar in Japan? Not happening.
A flaw you can't cancel out of:
Car goes haywire → can't kill the engine.
Driving on the highway lane-keep feature → misses the white line on a curve, goes straight, and slams into oncoming traffic.
It hasn't cleared them — that's why it's 'Level 2++.'
But the capability for Level 3 or 4 is already there.
I figured it'd only work under limited conditions like highways, but it seems more capable than expected.
Sounds like a driving-school car?
The bar's a lot higher for passenger cars though, wonder if it'll really work.
I hate driving, so this is a lifesaver.
That'll be +3 million yen.
But we can put it on a balloon/residual-value loan for you!
What Toyota pushed hard for was a ban on driving against the flow of traffic.
Going the right way, the brakes can engage smoothly, but going against traffic, it has to be treated as an emergency stop.
If the revision had gone through properly, wrong-way driving would count as an abnormal situation where slamming the brakes is unavoidable, boosting self-driving's real-world viability.
But because the police dragged their feet, kids and the elderly can still legally drive the wrong way.
Even with no parking at your destination, it'll just drive itself back.
And if you call it back with enough lead time, it'll wait for you parked with the hazards on.
Sounds super convenient for places like shopping malls or Disney.
The real question is the price.
Mostly doable with current equipment.
Just a small step up from what's already there.
The gear that'll be mandatory by 2030 basically makes this possible already.
If it gets tailgated, I'd want it to just pull over onto the shoulder and let the aggressive driver pass.
Will insurance even cover it?
At Level 4, even if there's a defect, the driver still ends up taking the blame as the main cause.
I heard at a JSAE (Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan) lecture about ten years ago that they'd eventually create categories like 'natural person,' 'legal person,' and 'robot person,' with the whole thing run behind the scenes like a mutual-aid insurance scheme.
No way this works in town — what about those awful merging intersections, or the ones that catch first-timers off guard?
> awful merging intersections
Other self-driving cars will yield to it.
> what about the ones that catch first-timers off guard?
Even if it's the car's first time there, if other cars have already driven it, that route is already in the data.
The victim's family is left with nowhere to direct their grief and anger.
It's not like Toyota did anything wrong, but how are they going to handle this?
'Hate the sin, not the sinner' doesn't work when there's no one to point to.
The driver's the one who has to monitor whether the system's working properly.
Background and Key Points
Most driver-assist features on the market today are equivalent to “Level 2,” which assumes the driver is monitoring the system at all times — and as the thread’s use of the term “Level 2++” suggests, Toyota’s new technology is also seen as an enhanced assist system limited to specific conditions like highways. In Japan, the 2023 revision to the Road Traffic Act legalized Level 4 (full autonomy) in designated areas under specific conditions, but full rollout to production cars on ordinary public roads is still a ways off. The thread split mainly over two issues: the unresolved question of whether the driver or the manufacturer bears responsibility in an accident, and skepticism about how practical the tech really is on city streets shared with pedestrians and cyclists. At the same time, there was strong hope for how it could help elderly drivers get around and ease the hassle of parking — the thread reflects a broader reality where legal and insurance frameworks haven’t caught up with the pace of technological progress.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt/summary from the 5ch (Science News+) thread [Self-Driving] Toyota to Equip Production Cars with ‘Nearly Hands-Free’ Self-Driving Tech Starting 2028.
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