A hands-on experience - Our LS600h's self-park facility is a rare technological weak spot

摘要

MY DECISION TO IGNORE the self-parking system on our Lexus LS600h was vindicated this week when I tried to get it to work in the car park at Autocar Towers. In short, it didn't. To be fair to the LS, it was more a case of user error than any failure in the technology itself, but the whole process is so convoluted that it would be simpler to learn how to park on your own. To cut a long story short, you have to use the Human Machine Interface (that's Lexus-speak for the touch screen) to identify the parking space and angle of approach, then allow the computer to steer while you control throttle and brake. For some reason I assumed the car would do the braking, so I almost rear-ended a ￡50,000 Mercedes ML in the next row.