“For those that see driving and parking as a chore, there’s relief in sight,” MarketWatch reported last month. “Take the Advanced Parking Guidance System in the new LS 460 from Lexus. Drivers can pull alongside a parked car, press a button and watch the luxury sedan, with just a few taps of the brakes, parallel park itself.”
A car that can park itself? Now that’s incredible news. And as the two versions of Lexus’ new luxury vehicle near their debut at the end of October, journalists across the country have been almost uniformly enthusiastic about the product — “a potpourri of amazing technology all wrapped in the usual Lexus goodness,” according to CNNMoney. “The ride is magic-carpet smooth. The wood trim looks as tasty as a box of Godiva cherries. In the long-wheelbase version, the back seats even give passengers a back rub worthy of a Swedish spa.”
The LS 460, said the Detroit News, “may be the most gadget-laden mass market vehicle of all time.” Numerous other stories have been similarly enthusiastic.
Tuesday night, ABC News even devoted the last segment of World News with Charles Gibson to Lexus’ Advanced Parking Guidance System.
But lest we suffer a rash of traffic accidents, it’s worth turning back to CNNMoney. Sure, Peter Valdes-Dapena’s piece Tuesday had an effusive beginning. Nothing wrong with that. If you like the car, write that you like the car. But Valdes-Dapena also noted that the LS 460’s most-attention grabbing feature, in practice, “really works only in ideal situations — basically, it helps only when help is needed least.”
For one thing, Valdes-Dapena said, “a space about four feet larger than the car” is required for the Lexus to parallel park itself — “hardly a tight spot” — and the parking process is more time-consuming than the gushing media coverage might indicate.
But when things are lined up, Valdes-Dapena wrote, a driver should lift his “foot off the brake just enough so that the car starts to creep gently backward.”
“Or maybe not. If you are on any sort of a downward incline, the system won’t work. It operates only at the ‘creeping’ speed attainable on level ground without using the gas pedal. And if you lift your foot off the brake pedal too much, the car starts going too fast and the system won’t work.”
“Using Parking Assist, ironically, takes practice. If it all goes well, the steering wheel turns at just the right times and you get into the space,” Valdes-Dapena added. “Sort of. It doesn’t really center the car in the space so you have to pull the car forward a bit. It also tends to leave the car a bit too far from the curb.”
Sounds complicated. Most things are.
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.