What Is Toyota’s Hitchless Towing And How Does It Work?

With new technologies pushing humanity into uncharted territory in virtually every facet of daily life, it should hardly come as a surprise that such advancements are also changing the automobile arena in dramatic fashion. If you follow the news in the realm of automotive tech, you know that topics involving advancements in the EV sector tend to be regular headline grabbers. So too are the development of game-changing safety technologies and entertainment features. With every new advancement, vehicles edge closer and closer to the stuff we’d expect to see in science fiction stories. Toyota’s Hitchless Towing concept very much fits into that category.

If you’ve yet to read or hear about Hitchless Towing, Toyota’s engineering team has been developing the technology for a couple of years now, with the company’s Research and Development team first hyping its work on the technology in a 2022 press release. While little has been said of the tech through official channels in the ensuing years, there’s every reason to believe Toyota is still hashing out the details with Hitchless Towing, as the window from research, development, and testing of such a technology to its actual use in the real-world tends to be years.

As its name states, Hitchless Towing involves one vehicle towing another without the need for a physical connection between the two. It should go without saying that such a technology could be a game-changer in the transportation industry.

Here’s how hitchless towing works

Towing a vehicle has, historically, involved the physical hitching of the lead vehicle to a trail vehicle. That connection has been accomplished in several different ways. For instance, tow trucks utilize either some variation of a winch to pull another vehicle, or a flatbed in which the vehicle being towed is physically driven up onto and secured. Likewise, consumer cars, trucks, and SUVs tend to go about towing by connecting vehicles through the use of a trailer hitch.

As noted, the very thought of eliminating the need for a physical connection in towing is not only radical in theory, but could full-on revolutionize the towing industry if, or better yet when, Toyota actually makes it a consumer reality. If you’re curious as to exactly how Toyota’s Hitchless Towing actually works, you are not alone. Unfortunately, Toyota has not released any explicit details into how the tech actually functions, beyond stating that, “It basically allows two vehicles to play follow the leader.”

That entails the vehicle being towed essentially follows behind the lead vehicle, mimicking its every movement on the road, including turning, stopping, and accelerating. While Toyota hasn’t officially announced how it’s achieving that effect, there’s clearly a digital element involved that allows the lead vehicle to control the trailing one remotely, perhaps in conjunction with similar technologies that allow similar features like adaptive cruise control and super cruise control to function. While such technologies tend to be expensive to fix when they invariably falter, Hitchless Towing is a fascinating concept we’d love to see offered in Toyota vehicles sooner rather than later.

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