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Future Toyotas promise to ease parking woes

Toyota will introduce new parking features that could make getting into a space much less hassle. The two systems will be introduced in new Toyotas starting from 2016.

The first is called Intelligent Clearance Sonar or ICS for short. Extra sensors have been added for a wider scanning area, allowing it to spot and identify an obstacle from further away. Not only that, ICS will keep the car from surging backwards of forwards should you hit the accelerator by accident.

Intelligent Clearance Sonar works with Toyota’s existing Intelligent Park Assist (IPA) system to ‘reduce the consequences of collisions’ using automatic braking.

Speaking of which, IPA can now also help with steering in tight spaces where you need to turn the wheel multiple times and get you out of a tight parallel parking space with less back-and-forward shenanigans.

A revised Panoramic View Monitor already available on Toyotas forms the second part of the equation. See-through View, which joins the existing Moving View, displays your surroundings as if the car was transparent. It’s similar in principle to the system Range Rover demonstrated that allows the driver to see through the bonnet.

See-through View deliberately makes obstacles larger in the infotainment display compared with Moving View so you are, in theory, less likely to miss that rogue bollard or shopping trolley.

The Japanese manufacturer said: “Toyota’s improvements to its parking support technology are intended to make parking safer and reduce the high level of property damage accidents witnessed in car parks worldwide. This in turn supports its mission to help eliminate traffic fatalities and injuries.”

Toyota is yet to say mention what models will benefit and at what cost.

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