My Next Toyo

Toyota filed a patent last year for a personalized fragrance dispenser system. Fairly straightforward, when the car recognizes someone as an authorized user, it can spray their favorite scent. But if the car gets broken into, it can give the driver a noxious blast of tear gas. Toyota’s patent is the first attempt to personalize, or weaponize, fragrance dispensers.

Toyota’s new patent describes a system that can detect when someone is walking up to them and spray their favorite scent in advance and deodorizing the car after they leave. While Apple recently patented facial recognition technology that would let cars recognize people and automatically unlock as they approach, Toyota’s patent relies on signals sent from a paired smartphone. Should Toyota choose to implement this patent into any future vehicles, it’s likely that we’ll see the upgraded fragrance system without tear gas first.

Personalized aromas sound like a pleasant way to take the pain out of a rough commute. But loading a literal canister of tear gas into the ventilation system of the cars that we use to transport our friends, children, and ourselves may be a real tough sell.