For the 2020 model year, the Toyota plans to offer some upgrades across most of its vehicle line-up.
When Toyota Motor North America rolls out its vehicle line-up for the 2020 model year, they’ll sport two new features: Automatic Engine Shut Off and Automatic Park, as well as have options for a few others.
Starting with 2020 model year vehicles, Toyota will phase in an automatic park system, which is designed to help reduce the risk of roll-away vehicles. The feature will be available in vehicles with an electronic means of shifting and/or applying the parking brake.
It will automatically shift the vehicle into the “park” position and/or apply the electronic parking brake, in the event the driver exits the vehicle without placing the vehicle in “park,” Toyota officials said.
Toyota vehicles come with audible and visual warnings if the vehicle isn’t in park. In addition, Toyota vehicles with non-traditional, stick-style shifters have a separate button marked with a P to reduce confusion.
(Toyota, SoftBank preparing launch of self-driving venture. Click Here for the story.)
The automatic engine shut off or “Auto Shut Off” with an enhanced audible and visual warning will be added to its Smart Key System.
Toyota is offering new safety-oriented tech in most of its 2020 model-year vehicles.
The Auto Shut Off feature will automatically shut off the engine after a pre-determined period of time in the event the vehicle is left running.
(Click Here for details about Toyota partnering with Subaru to accelerate its EV program.)
The automaker also plans to offer additional enhancements will including smartphone app as an alert in the future.
Currently, Toyota vehicles issue a two-step alert to notify the driver that the engine is running and requests engine to be turned off. Toyota has included this feature since the introduction of smart key system in 2003.
(To see more about Toyota’s to unleash flood of 19 new products, Click Here.)
Toyota noted in its announcement that the new features will help maintain the company’s tradition of technological innovation, observing it introduced the Toyota Safety Sense and Lexus Safety System+ packages with automatic emergency braking – standard believing that making the technologies standard was not only beneficial but also would boosts customer satisfaction.