Global Market Review of Driver Assistance Systems

Overall, just-auto estimates that some 6.9m parking assistance systems were fitted to newly-registered cars across Europe, North America and Japan in 2007. That volume could reach 18.2m by 2014.

Driver assistance systems, either on the road or still on the drawing board, divide into three distinct categories, collision-warning, collision-mitigation systems and avoidance systems.

Whilst all of these driver assistance systems are feasible either now or at some point in the near future, there are significant problems in software control, such as how to make the various systems work together to form a true protection zone around the vehicle, and how to determine if, or when the system should intervene with the driving process.

The continuous development of driver assistance systems is accompanied by the European Union's eSafety action programme for road safety. The programme aims to halve the number of road fatalities by 2010, and driver assistance systems will make a major contribution to the achievement of this aim.

This latest edition of our report provides updated analysis on the latest trends and technologies in the sector. It includes exclusive interviews with executives at Denso Corp, Continental, Mobileye and Visiocorp, plus product fitment forecasts that predict how the driver assistance market will evolve from 2004 through to 2014.

Chapter 1:

Introduction - A brief description of driver assistance systems and their use.

Chapter 2:

The market - This extensive chapter includes exclusive interviews with a number of key executives. The author talks to Amrei Drechsler at Continental about their stage of development with respect to each of its active, and passive driver assistance systems. We also speak to Yasuo Yoshikawa, project leader of the Technology Planning Department, Denso Corp, about the company's driver assistance technologies.

A number of the other main players in the sector are also profiled, namely Bosch, Delphi, Hella, TRW, Visteon and Valeo, plus we include our forecast data in this chapter. Volume and value figures (2004 through to 2014) for adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning systems and parking assistance systems in Europe, Japan and North America are shown.

Chapter 3:

Technical review - This review offers two more interviews, one with Alf Liesener, marketing manager, Visiocorp plc, about the company's driver assistance technologies and their fortunes with respect to their blind spot detection system, and the second with Ido Amir, marketing manager, Mobileye Vision Technologies, about the company's driver assistance systems.

The latest developments in driver assistance systems are also investigated, with a focus on adaptive cruise control, blind spot warning and lane departure warning, parking assistance and night vision. Vehicles equipped with these features could detect potential accident situations, provide warnings or automatically engage a vehicle's brakes to maintain a pre-set distance between vehicles.

'Tomorrow's car' is also touched on. We discuss the ideas currently being researched, such as Continental's research into 'wrong-way driving warning' systems, and Denso Corp's testing of vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems on public roads in Abashiri, Japan.