Toyota attacks rivals over claims driverless cars are ready

Toyota has launched a scathing attack at both car makers and tech companies who claim they are ready to introduce fully autonomous cars.

The criticism follows companies like pure-electric car maker, Tesla, claiming its Model 3 will be capable of fully autonomous driving.

Last year the US car maker's founder, Elon Musk, claimed that the Model X and Model S and Model 3, the latter on sale in the USA in 2017 (2018 in other markets), would come fitted with hardware that would enable 'Level 5 autonomy' which allows the vehicle to drive itself without any human interaction or supervision.

Initially, it's thought vehicles like the Model 3 won't be sold as fully autonomous tech - but will be only a software update away from being driverless.

Level 5 is referred within the industry as the 'holy grail' of self-driving as it can completely eliminate a human from the driving experience but, according to Toyota's R&D boss Gill Pratt, nobody is even close to safely launching the tech.

Speaking to CES show goers, Pratt said: "None of us in the automobile or IT industries are close to achieving true Level 5 autonomy".

Toyota's R&D boss says to achieve the "perfection" needed for driverless vehicles still requires "many years" and "many more miles than anyone has logged of both simulated and real-world testing" before it can be safely introduced to the market.

The problem, Pratt says, with the new technology is that while society can accept the 39,000 annual deaths caused by human error (in the US alone), nobody would tolerate a similar death toll if they were caused by a software or hardware fault.

Toyota has already invested more than a billion dollars in both the artificial intelligence and the hardware needed for self-driving capability but says it is still a long way from handing over control to computers.

Instead, Pratt suggests Toyota might jump from Level 2 autonomy that allows a semi-autonomous cruise control (if hands remain on the wheel) to Level 4 autonomy that allows a degree of full driverless capability but only on roads with embedded infrastructure that safely guides the vehicle.

Tesla has yet to announce when it plans to introduce the software to allow any of its models the ability for fully autonomous driving but some suggest it could be as soon as early 2019 to get a head start on its competitors.

Other car makers like Ford, meanwhile, says it too plans to have full autonomy on offer - but much later that Tesla. Currently the Blue Oval says it will have its first fleet of driverless vehicles in major cities by 2021.