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Weekly Recap: Toyota wants cars to be your 'close friends' around 2020

Toyota confirmed plans this week to launch autonomous technology in its production cars around 2020. The automaker's version is called Highway Teammate, and it's one element of a broader mobility strategy that includes vehicles communicating with each other and the grid. "Toyota believes that interactions between drivers and cars should mirror those between close friends who share a common purpose, sometimes watching over each other and sometimes helping each other out," the company said in a statement. That sounds utopian, and perhaps a bit cheesy, but it's an acknowledgment that autonomous driving requires more than technology developed in a vacuum. Toyota is looking at its research in a broader context, and dubs its overall strategy the Mobility Teammate Concept. Highway Teammate is the first step. Its test vehicle is a modified Lexus GS, which uses road-mapping data and external sensors to merge or exit highways, change lanes, and maintain safe distances during driving. It's operated on the Shuto Expressway in Tokyo. Toyota has been working on autonomous tech since the 1990s, with the goal of providing mobility for older people and the disabled, as well as lowering the frequency of traffic accidents. Toyota's push comes as an early adopter, Nissan, is hedging on its own deadline to implement the autonomous tech by 2020 due to a lack of firm laws governing self-driving cars around the world. Conversely, Volvo took the landmark step of being the first automaker to accept liability for when its cars will operate in autonomous mode, and urged the US government to set federal guidelines to regulate the technology. OTHER NEWS & NOTES 2016 BMW M4 GTS: Your water-injected, turbo-boosted demon BMW is unleashing its most powerful M4 ever, a 493-horsepower special edition that's road legal yet bred for the track. The company is making 700 copies for sale around the world, and 300 of them will come to the United States. The twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter six-cylinder revs to 7,600 rpm and uses a water-injection technology to cool the intake air and lower the compression temperature. BMW says this allows it to wring more power out of the inline six. The car also uses carbon-fiber reinforced plastic for the roof, hood, engine compartment strut brace, drive shaft, and rear spoiler to reduce weight. The M4 features BMW's organic light-emitting diode taillights, which are said to be an industry first.

McLaren previews 650S track special

Earlier this month, McLaren promised it would bring the production-ready P1 GTR track special to the Geneva Motor Show this coming March, and within days we started hearing rumors that it was preparing to give the 650S a similar treatment. Now Woking has released this teaser image that appears to show just such a creation. Based on the existing 650S (which itself is a further evolution of the MP4-12C that put McLaren Automotive back on the map) the new track version is tipped to be called either the 650 GTR (like its big brother) or the 675 LT – the number indicating a 25-horsepower spike in output and the letters standing for Long Tail in reference to the similarly extended F1 GTR that conquered Le Mans in the 1990s. Look closely at the camo in the second teaser shot and that racer is exactly what you'll see is making up the pattern – specifically the #41 Gulf/Davidoff example, if our eyes do not deceive us. The previous 12C bred a track version called the Can-Am edition as well as the less extreme 12C GT Sprint. The latter has already been replaced by the 650S Sprint, but as we projected back in April, the Can-Am was ripe for a successor as well. Just what name and form it takes – and whether it will be bound exclusively to the circuit or certified for the road – we'll be finding out within the next month or two, so watch this space. Featured Gallery McLaren 650S track special teasers News Source: McLaren Spy Photos Geneva Motor Show McLaren Coupe Supercars mclaren 650s mclaren 675lt

McLaren weighing dedicated P1 Track version

Start drawing parallels between Ferrari and McLaren and you're not likely to be left with much white space on the page when you're done. Both are Formula One racing teams first and foremost, and only started building cars for the road once they'd proven themselves on the racetrack. They both top the leaderboards for the most F1 championships, and have probably swapped more drivers (not to mention sponsors) than any other teams on the grid, but have both fallen behind in recent years and fired their team principals as a result. Their road-going supercars compete for largely the same customers, from the ~$250k, mid-engined V8s of the 458 and 650S all the way up to the latest million-dollar, 900-plus-horsepower hybrid hypercars. But Ferrari is a bigger company and has been in the game much longer, and as a result offers its customers two things that McLaren does not. One is front-engined GTs like the F12 Berlinetta, FF and California. The other is the exclusive XX track program. While McLaren may be showing no intention of taking on the former, the latter could be in the cards. In correspondence with Autoblog, McLaren spokesman Wayne Bruce confirmed a report from Autocar stating that, following requests from a number of P1 owners, the company has contacted all 375 buyers to gauge interest in a dedicated track-only version of the P1. Similar to the Ferrari FXX or the upcoming LaFerrari XX, the P1 Track would be set up specifically for the circuit. According to Bruce, "the P1 'Track' will have (even) more power and (even) torque than the road legal P1. It will also have (even) more extreme, aero tuned styling and an (even) more minimalist interior." All of which sounds pretty promising, considering the starting point is a hybrid hypercar with 903 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque on tap. But that's not all: "McLaren will organise a series of track events dedicated to the P1 'Track' and its owners. There will be one-to-one driver training for this very exclusive group, too." In other words, a similar approach to what Ferrari takes with its top clients, only likely without the pretense of paying to serve as a factory test driver. Production of the P1 Track would only start once all 375 road-going versions were completed, and though "the number to be produced has not been established yet... we envisage it being in the low double digits," with application open exclusively to existing P1 owners.