The Honda Ridgeline and Hyundai Santa Cruz stand alone in the pickup segment as the only models with trunks.
The two crossover-based pickups have waterproof storage compartments under the floors of their beds. The Honda’s has a large cargo bin and space for a spare tire in front of it, while the smaller Hyundai’s is just a bin.
The electric Rivian R1T has a similar feature, but it is shallower and reserved for a spare tire, unless the owner decides they don’t need to bring it along.
But now Toyota appears to be thinking about joining the fray, and stepping things up a notch in the process. The automaker has applied for a patent on a “deployable storage bin” that’s more than just a hole in the floor.
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The design takes the bin and adds a four-bar linkage to it, which allows it to be lifted from the stowed position into a higher loading position. The patent illustrates how this could be assisted by a “gas damper” or “power spindle” attached to the bin that could help lift and lower it or move it entirely on its own.
The utility of the system seems debatable. On the one hand, it may make it easier to reach the bottom of the bin, but the lift-over height is increased. The description doesn’t mention, or limit its use to unibody or body-on-frame pickup designs. Toyota only sells the latter in the U.S. today, but it may be working on a smaller model similar to the Santa Cruz or an all-electric model like the Rivian R1T, which is something of a combination of the two.
Read Also: RAM DESIGNED A TRANSFORMING FASTBACK PICKUP THAT’S BETTER FOR WORK THAN A CYBERTRUCK
As with many patent applications, there is no guarantee Toyota has any current intentions of putting the bin into production, but it does open a window into what the brand’s engineers and designers are thinking about.
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