Has anyone thought of a way to extend the Prius' Adaptive Cruise Control all the way down to stop-and-go operation? It seems to me all that would be needed is to remove the drop-out threshold as the car in front slows, and allow a shorter following distance.
All (most?) cars appear to have around a 25 mph lower limit. I'm wondering if that's a legal requirement for some safety reason.
Most cars don't have the ability to apply brakes automatically (be it regen/electric braking or friction/mechanical). Cars that have automatic emergency braking would technically be able to bring themselves all the way to a stop from highway speed, though it might not be the most graceful (or safe) of operations. IMHO, there's a pretty big risk in allowing the car to start moving on its own from a dead stop. I can think of several reasons why a person might not want to start moving, even though the car in front has moved, thus the requirement for manual interaction. Just wait for the self-driving Google cars.
Nope. Subaru will do DRCC down to full stop (however, driver intervention needed to start moving again). The Lexus LS460 does full stop and start automatically. I wish the DRCC in the more pedestrian models from TMC would emulate the 460, but I'm really happy to have the functionality down to 25mph. I'll never buy another car without it.
Interesting related Wikipedia article with a chart of vehicles that use adaptive cruise control, and which offer "stop&start" functionality. Autonomous cruise control system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lots of errors. The LS460 full ACC is available in the US, and Toyota's DRCC is RADAR, not LASER as indicated in the article.
