Toyota Motor Corp (ADR) (NYSE:TM) is planning to introduce a car-sharing program in the United States next year.
Toyota Motor Corp will launch a pilot to test its car-sharing program and it will start in January 2017. The pilot will take place in Los Angeles and Getaround will be helping. Getaround is a car-sharing company that has received investments from the Mirai Creation Investment Limited Partnership, which TM contributes to.
The car-sharing program being created by Toyota Motor Corp will use its new Smart Key Box technology. This piece can be attached to a car without modifying it and uses Bluetooth Low Energy communications. It allows users that are part of the program to access and start a vehicle with the box via their smartphones.
The Smart Key Box is designed to specifically limit a person’s use of a vehicle to time periods that they have reserved it for. The company hopes that this will make it safer for users to share and rent cars from each other.
“As a mobility service platform provider, by collaborating with various companies and services, we would like to help create a new mobility society in order to offer safer and more convenient mobility to our customers,” Shigeki Tomoyama, president of Toyota’s Connected company, said in a statement.
Toyota Motor Corp will own an operate the Mobility Services Platform that will be in testing during early 2017. It will also be developing a financial system that will let the lessee of a vehicle use income generated from the car-sharing program to pay for their lease.
TM stock was up slightly as of Noon Monday.
