Toyota Motor Co. said Monday it has developed a Smart Key Box, which can be placed in a vehicle to allow users to lock and unlock doors, start the engine and perform other features with their smart phones.
DETROIT -- Toyota Motor Co. said Monday it has developed a Smart Key Box, which can be placed in a vehicle to allow users to lock and unlock doors, start the engine and perform other features with their smart phones.
The new feature will be used by Toyota to test mobile app-based car sharing, similar to General Motors' Maven service, which launched in Ann Arbor at the beginning of this year and has since expanded to about 10 cities.
Toyota is partnering with car-sharing firm Getaround to launch a pilot program in San Francisco, beginning in January.
Toyota's financial services arm will also develop a new product that would allow a lessee to use income generated from car sharing to pay for leasing charges.
Toyota said that based on initial results of those efforts, it will consider using its mobility services platform to explore an unmanned rent-a-car business in Japan.
"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 in-house Connected Company, said in a release.
Toyota is far from the first automaker to be dipping its toes in shared mobility. As noted, GM has been embracing shared mobility with its Maven car-sharing service, and Ford Motor Co. has, since at least the 2016 Detroit auto show, been referring to itself as an auto and a mobility company.