New Toyota Technology Patents

Patent filings are the tea leaves of the automotive industry. Due to years’ worth of R&D, design, and iteration before even simple features make it to new Toyota cars, many people keep an eye on patents for a clue to what’s coming in the future. Some interesting ones have come from the Toyota Motor Corporation recently, some of which may eventually see daylight at Bell Road Toyota.

The first and most likely bit of technology is a unique automated manual transmission. It looks and works — mostly — like a traditional manual gearbox. However, it uses locking pins to prevent over-shifting, and will also disengage the clutch and put the car in neutral when coasting. These features could be useful to those learning to drive a stick for the first time, or those of us who are a bit rusty.

Visibility around pillars — especially the A and D pillars — has vexed drivers for decades. One solution is to install a camera to afford a view “around” the pillar. Another — and the proposed route for future Toyota car designs — involves using a complex set of mirrors to essentially render the pillars transparent. It’s unclear whether the materials to attempt something like this exist, or if it’s just some very creative applied physics on an engineer’s part.

We’re saving our favorite for last. When we saw it, we wondered if someone jumped the gun on an April Fool’s joke, but the patent exists. It’s a chute and platform that run between your seats so that if you drop something — change, pens, keys, stray french fries — you can retrieve it quickly instead of losing it to the abyss.

Will these features make it to a future version of the Toyota RAV4 or Toyota C-HR? Only time will tell. But if you want to see the results of decades’ worth of patents and innovation, you’ll find it right here at your Phoenix Toyota dealership. Bell Road Toyota welcomes you to our showroom, located at 2020 West Bell Road in Phoenix, AZ.