Toyota is planning on releasing a car capable of monitoring driving information, such as clutch, brake and accelerator pedal presses and gear changes and then exporting that data to either a smartphone app for analysis or to PlayStation game Gran Turismo in order to recreate a given drive.
According to reports there is a single sports car slated for release in Japan with this functionality in 2013 but the company hopes to release it worldwide at a later stage. Toyota’s “86” sports car, the first vehicle to feature the tech, will export the data collected by the vehicle’s ECU (electric control unit) either via Bluetooth to a smartphone or to a USB memory stick.
Company spokesman Dion Corbett said “Other people will be able to look at your performance and say, ‘You took the corner too early, you should have taken this kind of line on that course.”
The company will apparently open the new vehicular platform to third-party software devs, allowing them to create apps around the driving data that these cars collect. Exporting data to PlayStation game Gran Turismo will require that players/drivers actually spend time on some of the official tracks that are represented in the game however.
Early next year the ECU export functions will be tested by Toyota’s race drivers before being inserted into more street-legal vehicles. The really strange part of this development is that it may herald a time where drivers need to pay attention to privacy statements before starting up their cars.
Source: PC World