Toyota Building Michigan Automated Test Facility

Toyota is set to test driving too dangerous for public roads at a new Michigan closed-course facility for automated-technology development.

Opening in October in the southeast Michigan town of Ottawa Lake, the facility will occupy 60 acres (24 ha) and be built within the 1.75-mile (2.8-km) oval test track at the Michigan Technical Resource Park (MITRP), the automaker’s research arm says.

“This new site will give us the flexibility to customize driving scenarios that will push the limits of our technology and move us closer to conceiving a human-driven vehicle that is incapable of causing a crash,” Toyota Research Institute’s Ryan Eustice, senior vice president-automated driving says in a statement.

TRI is leasing the land for the course from MITRP, which opened in 1968 as a proving ground for a Tier 1 supplier and now functions as an advanced-technology test area.

In Ottawa Lake, TRI says it will replicate driving in both congested urban areas and on 4-lane divided highways with high-speed entrance and exit ramps. There also will be slick surfaces on which to test automated-driving technologies.

As part of the deal with MITRP, Toyota will be able to use the oval track and other group facilities and services.

Toyota has existing partnerships in the field of automated driving with GoMentum Station in California and Mcity and the American Center for Mobility in Michigan.