Toyota is one of the biggest car producers in the world, has announced very ambitious plan to change everything we know about mobility and delivery services. The company has created new concept car which is fully autonomous electric vehicle and named the concept “E-Pallete”.
“The automobile industry is clearly amidst its most dramatic period of change as technologies like electrification, connected and automated driving are making significant progress. Toyota remains committed to making ever better cars. Just as important, we are developing mobility solutions to help everyone enjoy their lives, and we are doing our part to create an ever-better society for the next 100 years and beyond. This announcement marks a major step forward in our evolution towards sustainable mobility, demonstrating our continued expansion beyond traditional cars and trucks to the creation of new values including services for customers”, said Akio Toyoda.
Basically the concept car will have variety of functions from typical mobility services such as carpooling and ride-sharing to mobile office, retail spaces ,hotel rooms and even medical clinics. Exterior E-pallet looks like small shuttle with the modular interior which can be modified depending on whether it will be used like on-demand delivery, ride-hailing service or small cargo transport. Moreover E-pallete cars can have different length and sizes depending on the needs, big ones will be for passengers transportation and small ones for delivery groceries.
Toyota is intended to begin testing of E-pallet concept in 2020s in the USA.Japanese car producer has recently partnered with a number of companies such as UBER, DIDI, Mazda, Amazon and Pizza Hut which means seriousness of the project
To sum up, in my view Toyota has really great and ambitious idea but nowadays implementation of this idea is very difficult because of firstly, lack of regulations (who should be responsible in case of an accident). Secondly, the technology which enables cars to be fully autonomous is not that advanced YET.
I think this is a very interesting and thoughtful idea. The company calls a lot of positive aspects in the design of this machine, which will not only simplify, but also provide comfort and safety in the future.
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