Ford’s new Focus stole the show at the Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) demo day earlier this week. Organised by Thatcham, the UK automotive insurance industry’s research body, and hosted by the InnovITS test facility within the Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA). While many of the other AEB-equipped vehicles available for test drives were from high-end manufacturers such as BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo; the Focus demonstrated the on-going movement towards the mass market for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).
“The Ford Focus is a step change in ADAS availability,” said Stephen Longden, SBD ITS and telematics specialist after attending the event. “As active safety systems become more mainstream, insurers and new car assessment programmes such as Euro NCAP will have to include ADAS in their testing and rating activities,” he adds. These issues and the emergence of legislation to mandate ADAS are discussed in SBD’s recent report Kickstarting the mass market for ADAS ~ a review of the key market drivers.
Ford is offering active safety through a Driver Assistance Pack option priced at £750 in Titanium and Titanium X grades of the Focus. This pack comprises systems for lane departure warning, lane keeping, driver alert monitoring and warning, automatic high beam control, traffic sign recognition, low speed safety (active city stop AEB) and blind spot information. Other ADAS systems are also available with the new Focus including adaptive cruise control with forward alert and brake support, speed limiter and active park assist.
Subaru provided an Outback model fitted with v2 of its EyeSight stereo camera-based driver support system. EyeSight provides multiple applications including AEB, adaptive cruise control, collision warning and lane departure warning. The system is only available in Japan at the moment but officials at the event indicated that it may come to Europe in the next 2-3 years.
To learn more about the latest trends in ADAS or to buy the report Kickstarting the mass market for ADAS ~ a review of the key market drivers please contact Kavitha Kuppuswamy at kkuppuswamy@sbd.co.uk
