Toyota Connected Europe Launches — To Focus On New Shared Mobility & Fleet Management Solutions

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

Toyota Connected has announced the launch of a new startup division, dubbed Toyota Connected Europe (TCEU). The division will be focused on the launch and support of new shared mobility services and fleet management solutions in the region.

The new Toyota Connected Europe startup will be based out of London (UK) and will see Toyota Motor Europe’s Vice President of Connected Car and Mobility, Agustin Martin, installed as its CEO. Also notable is that Toyota Connected North America’s CEO, Zack Hicks, will function as chairman at the new firm.

The reason for basing Toyota Connected Europe out of London — rather than out of a different city in Europe — is reportedly so as to make use of the region’s particularly large concentration of engineers, data researchers, and software development talent.

The press release (h/t Green Car Congress) provides a bit more information: “TCEU will partner with Toyota Motor Europe, Toyota retailers, and distributors in the region to support the launch of new shared mobility and fleet management solutions for consumers, businesses, governments, and other stakeholders.

“The company will leverage and extend Toyota’s Mobility Services Platform (MSPF), a cloud-based digital ecosystem that provides the tools necessary to bring to market mobility services including ride sharing, car sharing and remote delivery, as well as manage the European operations of the Toyota Big Data Center.”

The Toyota Connected Europe startup will initially feature funding of £4.5 million (~$6.3 million) and employ an estimated 35–50 people.

With a core focus of the Toyota Connected Europe division being shared services — carsharing, ridesharing, etc. — it seems worth noting other automaker efforts in this arena:

BMW & Daimler are now working together on carsharing, ridesharing, and related services — which includes a merger of some sort of DriveNow and Car2Go.

GM is working on peer-to-peer carsharing as part of its broader Maven sharing arm. It also has the EN-V 2.0 carsharing program in China.

Nissan recently launched a new carsharing service using Nissan LEAFs. It’s also been running carsharing programs for years with its little New Mobility Concept EVs.

Hyundai launched its first carsharing service last year in Amsterdam, Holland. The service uses Hyundai Ioniq Electrics.

Renault & Ferrovial created a joint venture called Zity for electrified carsharing.

PSA Group is in the game with its Free2Move arm and investment in TravelCar.

Volvo announced last year that it would create a carsharing arm.

Volkswagen said in 2016 it would focus much more on these mobility as a service (MaaS) matters.

You get the point. Every major automaker and its cousin has an arm or two working on carsharing, ridesharing, etc. They often utilize electric or at least hybrid vehicles for such services — for logical reasons. How will Toyota differentiate itself? What regions will it focus on? What electric models does it intend to use for sharing services? How much of the market does Toyota think will shift from ownership to sharing services?

We don’t yet know the answers to those questions, but we sent them over to Toyota for responses. We’ll update this article if we get anything notable to share.


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

James Ayre

James Ayre's background is predominantly in geopolitics and history, but he has an obsessive interest in pretty much everything. After an early life spent in the Imperial Free City of Dortmund, James followed the river Ruhr to Cofbuokheim, where he attended the University of Astnide. And where he also briefly considered entering the coal mining business. He currently writes for a living, on a broad variety of subjects, ranging from science, to politics, to military history, to renewable energy.

James Ayre has 4830 posts and counting. See all posts by James Ayre