Toyota is the latest automobile manufacturing company to rollout a mobility model espoused by a startup, with a strategic investment in car sharing provider Getaround. Toyota’s investment also comes with integration with Getaround’s platform on the technology and finance side, incentivizing Toyota car owners to participate.
What Getaround does is that it allows car owners to rent out their own vehicles when they’re not in use, in order to decrease the amount of time they spend idle and help car owners use their vehicles to help offset the cost of owning them in the first place.
With this partnership, Toyota will offer new vehicles, beginning with premium Lexus cars, for rental via Getaround with completely keyless entry and driving via their smartphone. Then beginning in January 2017, Toyota’s financial services wing will let Toyota car lessees make payments on their vehicle directly from their Getaround earnings pool, eliminating a step between revenue generation and applying that to offsetting the cost of the car.
The tie-up between Toyota and Getaround is reminiscent of some other carmaker/startup partnerships, including GM and Lyft. It’s also similar to the model Tesla envisions for its future Tesla Network, wherein car owners will be able to rent out their vehicles on-demand when not in use. Tesla’s future car-sharing revolved around the use of self-driving versions of its car.
