Toyota patents transparent A-pillar invention
Japanese car-maker serious about reducing forward blind-spot with clever, cheap solution to help you 'see' through your car's A-pillarsToyota has filed new blueprints with the United States Patent and Trademark Office that could help drivers avoid accidents related to blind-spots.
The latest innovation is claimed to be a cheap effective solution to help drivers see 'through' their car's front A-pillars, which can obscure vision when turning left or right.
Designed to address a growing problem on vehicles like heavy SUVs that need thicker pillars to pass mandatory rollover crash tests, the new device has been created to be cheaply fitted to all new Toyota models.
Unlike Jaguar's 360 Virtual Urban Windscreen concept -- which was developed with Continental and employs the same technology as the Invisible Bonnet system seen on sister company Land Rover's 2014 Discovery Vision Concept -- Toyota's solution does not project images onto the A-pillars.
Instead, the Japanese car-maker claims its engineers have solved the problem with carefully placed mirrors that bend light around an object.
Toyota describes the technology as a 'cloaking device' but, as with the Jaguar Land Rover system, it's not yet been confirmed when we might see the new safety device on production vehicles.
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