At Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technology JAPAN 2012, Toyota showed their new electric vehicle INSECT(information network social electric city transporter) concept and the name just about sums up what it is intended to do. Transport one person (seeing that it is a single seat vehicle), be social with it’s owner and provide information
It is a spiffy-looking little car concept, very similar in appearance Toyota’s other single seat electric vehicle, the Coms. Just with fancy gull doors and a more hardcore edge going 60km/h at top speed. Plus it has motion sensors, voice and face recognition and a large display over the steering wheel to display the GPS navigation system. The screen is connected to Toyota’s Cloud- based navigation center, giving the driver a virtual navigation agent at their command.
The vehicle also recognizes when the driver is coming towards it using kinect sensors and when it does recognize it’s owner; there is no need for a keyed entry. That’s not all. Toyota insect anticipates it’s drivers next move and helps out, you could say. For instance, stretch your hand out for the door and it opens it for you. How kind.
As the owner gets more acquainted wit the car, so does the Insect with the the owner. Using the Cloud, it stores necessary information to get to know the driver. Eventually becoming familiar with your routes and music/ whatever you listen to taste. If you go to the the cinema around the corner often, it will eventually get familiar with the route and even make suggestions to you of other places you could try going to. It’s a very social concept.
Given a price of approximately $10, ooo, there is no information given as to release date or even if Toyota has plans to put it into production. But if the latter is the case, more things would need to come in place before that could actually happen. Like for instance a proper battery system.
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