Lexus LS+ Concept Boasts Autonomous Highway Cruising

Photography by Stephanie Wallcraft. Additional images courtesy Lexus.

Lexus took to the stage at the Tokyo Motor Show to reveal the Lexus LS+ Concept, which features body lines previously seen in the LF-FC Concept from the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show, but with a front-end lighting treatment uniquely its own. Once again, the bigger story lies under the hood, but rather than the hydrogen fuel cells of the previous concept, the LS+ offers the "Highway Teammate".

Designed to offer a fully autonomous experience from on-ramp to off-ramp, "Highway Teammate" is a suite of technologies designed to recognize and react to road and traffic conditions, allowing for automated merging and diverging, lane keeping, lane changing, and follow-distance maintenance. Lexus is targeting 2020 for the launch of its highway technologies in a production vehicle, and first half of the 2020s for implementation of the city-street counterpart, dubbed the "Urban Teammate".

In tandem with its autonomous technologies, the LS+ Concept leverages its constant link to a data centre to update system software, ranging from navigation data to new features and functionality, thereby allowing the car to "learn and grow along with its users," according to Lexus.