This summer I had the chance to drive a car equipped with autonomous braking and lane keep assist. The car was the 2018 Corolla XSE which is a compact car made by Toyota. I am not a fan of Toyota due to their dated design so I will be a bit critical analyzing the car. I liked driving the car because of Toyota’s Safety Sense Technology.
At first glance, the interior seemed very luxurious with a leather dashboard, edgeless touchscreen display, all-black interior with blue trim stitching.
After driving the car I noticed that the steering wheel had fake leather stitching, the dash panel had a fake leather stitch which turned out to be plastic and nothing was actually sown in the dash. The car had a cramped climate control display which only controlled one zone, unlike most cars which can be set to have two different temperatures. The car was missing the Welcome Lights feature and it didn’t have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.
My favorite part of the car was the front fascia, the XSE model featured the premium sport grille with LED fog lights. The front of the car was very aggressive and caught the attention of the eye. The car has Bi-LED headlights which are very bright and automatic hi-beams which deactivate when another car is detected by the radar.
I was intrigued to drive this car because it has new autonomous safety features. I tried to test all of the features to see how it reacts in a real life situation. If you’re speeding into traffic and not paying attention the car will alert you with a loud beep and “BRAKE!” will flash red on the center display. I think this is a really useful feature considering the high amount of people texting and driving which we see everyday! The lane keep assist feature was useful but mostly annoying because every time the car was nearing the yellow line it started to beep, once the car is centered the beeping stops. I thought it was really cool how the steering wheel can turn itself to center the car on its own. The new Toyota is also able to follow a car in front of you while using the dynamic cruise control. Once the car in front slows down, you also slow down and vice versa.
To conclude my analysis, the new Corolla is a very interesting car with a sharp exterior design, and advanced safety features. I think that Toyota needs to improve the material quality as it was mostly faux-leather. I believe every single automatic car should pre-collision avoidance systems because people are always driving distracted and this can reduce the chances of having an accident. Since I have driven the car Toyota has already created a redesign for 2019 which features Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, but only for the hatchback.
Here is a video from Toyota showing how the car stops on its own.
#Cars #Toyota #Corolla #Safety #technology
Related Articles and Sources:
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/toyota/corolla/2018/overview
Alex Calinescu 