Toyota and Servco Pacific (Servco) have partnered to test new car-sharing technology in Honolulu, Hawaii.
When the employee-only pilot testing programme concludes, Servco, the distributor of Toyota vehicles in Hawaii, will use the car-sharing technology to launch a new Honolulu-based car share business by the end of 2017.
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The car-sharing application will support driver identification and authentication, plus payment and fleet management for car-sharing businesses. It also includes a Smart Key Box (SKB), which lets users lock and unlock vehicles via a smartphone.
The application was developed in-house and is managed by Toyota Connected North America (TC), the global technology strategy business unit for Toyota.
“This new application demonstrates the power of combining Toyota’s global manufacturing and technology capacity with dealers’ extensive local operations to provide consumers with more convenient options to move,” said Connected Company Toyota president, Shigeki Tomoyama.
For his part, Toyota Connected North America CEO, Zack Hicks, added: “This successful launch of [the] Mobility Services Platform (MSPF) represents the next generation in car-sharing platforms and is Toyota’s global foundation for fleet management, car-sharing, and the future of mobility.
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By GlobalData“Its flexible API based platform allows us to quickly adapt to new market opportunities and support deployment of locally-tailored mobility services.”
Since January 2017, Toyota has been working with Getaround on a car-sharing pilot programme in San Francisco, verifying convenience and usability of the SKB.
Eventually, Toyota will also begin working with other dealers and distributors to tailor the core technology for their markets.
Launched in 2016, TC was created to significantly expand Toyota’s capabilities in the fields of vehicle data science, machine learning and contextual data services development, providing a range of data and computer science services across the automaker’s global operations.
