Lexus/Toyota’s system isn’t anywhere close to class leading, but it’s definitely better than Volvo’s.
In order to remain brief there were three main differences that stood out to me.
1. General lane keeping – the Lexus just holds the center of the lane without bouncing back and forth between the lines like our Volvo’s do. It also negotiates tighter turns than our Volvo’s do. There’s been a couple sharper turns (on a major highway) that I allowed the Volvo free range, just to see what it would do. And it couldn’t handle them. I’ve yet to find a highway curve the Lexus can’t handle. And it definitely can handle tighter back road turns. It even slows down for them.
2. Capacitive touch steering wheel vs torque sensor. I found that I can rest my two thumbs barely on the steering wheel for the Lexus to recognize that my hands are on the wheel. This combined with the eye tracking (which is very intrusive if you’re not paying attention) allowed me to go long stretches on the highway without needing to intervene with the car. The Volvo requires you to apply some torque to the wheel every 8-10 seconds to let the car know you’re still there. This is annoying and causes me to just keep my hands fully engaged with the wheel, completely negating the purpose of the steering assist to begin with. Which is why I drive with it off most of the time.
3. Stop and go traffic. After coming to a stop in the Volvo, you need to press the accelerator (or a steering wheel button) to reengage the adaptive cruise control. The Lexus has a system called traffic jam assist. Under 20mph, as long as you are paying attention, and the car can see the car ahead and lines on either side of the road, you can go hands completely off. We got stuck in about 8 miles of terrible stop and go traffic, and allowing the car to just handle this was so refreshing. I wasn’t stressed after getting to the other side of the traffic like I normally would have been.
As far as I can tell, Pilot Assist hasn’t gotten any better through any of the OTA’s that Volvo has pushed out since we bought my wife’s XC40 in 2021. And the fact that they have released, and then subsequently pulled back, the last 7 OTA’s tells me that Volvo has a lot of work to do on the software side of things.