Lexus leads connected car test

Five hundred ordinary Aussies in the Queensland city of Ipswich will soon be leading connected-car development in Australia.

Lexus is laying the trail with a pair of highly-specialised RX 450h pilot cars that are loaded with locally-developed sensors and operating systems.

It is one of the partners in the multi-million dollar trial with the Queensland government, Ipswich City Council and police.

It is built around 29 sensor-equipped traffic lights that can communicate with the specially-equipped cars to warn of everything from red lights to road hazards and stationary vehicles.

“This is the jumping-off point. It’s a way of integrating the infrastructure that is already on the road,” says Alex Lockie, the Lexus project leader and Toyota Australia’s Senior Intelligent Transport Systems Specialist.

“It’s a way of managing automated vehicles and non-automated vehicles on the same road. It’s a way of getting all those of pieces of information out to drivers in a way that smooths the traffic flow.”

Carsales is the first civilian to take the Ipswich test route, driving one of the Lexus test cars, and can report the system works.

It’s not particularly sophisticated in a global context, where many companies are demonstrating fully-autonomous cars, but the warnings of red lights and other traffic – including a startling haptic seat vibrator – are real and useful.

The Lexus installation on the twin RXs is seamless and uses an over-sized dashboard display to provide its alerts, although there is no mistaking the test cars with their sign-written sides and a battery of sensors over the roof.

The system correctly identifies and warns when its twin RX stops ahead, and picks up notifications of red lights, but there is no chance to test the warning of pedestrians, road works or queuing that are part of the system.

Ordinary drivers will have less technology, missing the haptic vibrators, but will pick up a $500 cash benefit for the installation of a special high-tech roof bar for the trial.

“We're in this trial to understand what works in Australia and how we need to alter it in the future,” says Lockie.

None of the government bodies can put a price on the trial, and Lexus is not revealing the cost of its test cars, but Ipswich won a competitive bid and the Queensland government is talking enthusiastically about the possibility of eliminating crashes and cutting the state’s road toll – which is up in 2020.

The two Lexus RX test cars are superseded models and have been developed and equipped in Australia, although there are production cars in Japan with a similar connected-vehicle system.

In Ipswich, the system uses sensors on the 29 intersections and inside the vehicles and Dedicated Short-Range Communications technology – similar to Bluetooth – in a program that could easily be duplicated in other cities.

“The support of manufacturers like Lexus will enable experts to gather data on additional safety scenarios involving vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity, such as emergency electronic braking warnings and slow, or stopped vehicle warnings,” says Queensland's Transport and Main Roads Minister, Mark Bailey.