A single passenger vehicle has been on every automaker’s mind, and Toyota is the one who has finally materialized that thought. At CEATEC Japan 2012 last week, The Company was seen with this ultra-compact, single passenger electric vehicle called the “Smart INSECT”. Short for “information network social electric city transporter,” it connects the home, vehicle, and people in new ways through Toyota’s cloud services. The Smart Insect concept seems like a thinner version of city cars like the Smart ForTwo or Scion iQ, with some kind of battery-electric drivetrain. The interior has an aircraft-like yoke rather than a traditional steering wheel along with small doors which open upwards.
The Smart INSECT incorporates new features like face and voice recognition. Motion sensors and cameras identify pre-registered drivers as they come closer and it will also welcome the person with blinking lights, messages and sounds from the instrument panel. It also has the capacity to connect to the driver’s home via a smartphone to manage systems like door locks and air conditioning. It can also apparently predict the driver’s intentions like opening doors automatically when driver reaches out to the door etc by tracking body movements. In the interior, a large display is featured above the steering wheel which offers a detailed GPS mavigation system which is connected to the cloud-based Toyota Smart Center, which hosts a virtual agent that provides navigation instructions through voice command.
As of now, the Smart Insect is only a concept, but the regular Coms do give us a detail regarding its abilities. Unfortunately, Toyota says they have no plans to take the Smart Insect concept car to production.
-Courtesy of Nitrobahn
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