here's a nice article on the ipa system which i guess is available in europe and japan but not here in the states yet because of federal guidelines. great to see toyota using the prius as a platform for automotive innovation!

http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7...?tag=cnetfd.sd

 

If you've ever seen a video of this in action, you'd notice that it's really impractical. It takes soooo long to setup the parking alignment that most people, even without the best parallel parking skills would have been parked by the time this system was ready to start parking.

In this case I'd definitely wait for version 3.0

 

yeah i rather spend the money on airbags, or shed the car some weight with lighter materials.

 

Hi Neal,
I was thinking about it this morning and the Prius has two built-in advantages:

1) MG2 - goes forward and reverse and can operate as a 'brake'. It is fully computer controlled.

2) Electrically assisted steering - Toyota only needed to add left-right steering commands and it no doubt is strong enough to handle low-speed steering requirements.

All that would be needed is a vision processing system connected to the existing backup camera, possibly a front sensor / camera and connetivity to the hybrid vehicle ECU and the steering assistance unit. Of course there would be a 'ton' of software but everything else is built-in to our computer controlled Prii.

Bob Wilson