Kanyi Okeke
Toyota Motor Corp. has launched a car-sharing service in Honolulu, Hawaii that allows customers to use smartphones to unlock and start cars for rent by the hour or day. It’s the latest service offered by an automaker that competes with ride-hailing and rental-car companies.
The service is called Hui, pronounced “hooey,” which means “group” in Hawaiian. Developed with local distributor Servco Pacific Inc., it uses a Toyota platform that tracks and analyzes who uses car-sharing and when. Toyota says it will use the data to better manage its supply of cars.
Starting at $9.95 an hour or $79.60 a day — including fuel and insurance — customers can reserve and rent a Toyota Prius, Lexus RX 350 or other model at one of 25 parking stations for round-trip use. Toyota joins rivals such as Daimler AG’s Car2Go and General Motor Co.’s Maven in offering a service that competes with traditional taxis, ride-hailing services like Uber Technologies Inc. and rental-car companies like Hertz Global Holdings Inc.
