Editor's letter: What really is mobility? Ask Toyota…
Toyota IMV 0 is a versatile truck that will arrive in emerging markets priced at $10,000
Japanese brand's versatile IMV 0 shows "future mobility" is more than just smartphone-like tech
It’s been quite amusing watching some car makers get into a twist trying to articulate what they mean about becoming mobility companies. After all, isn’t that what they are, anyway?
Some seem to think that this instead means launching a few apps or overhauling interiors to make them more like smartphones - often, ultimately, making them harder to use.
Yet the best recent example of what being a mobility company actually means came from the most old-school new vehicle to launch in a long time.
Toyota’s IMV 0 truck is a development of the Hilux chassis, which looks like one of the obscure vehicles you see operating at airports. But despite being so simple, it is actually very clever: it has four wheels, an engine, and then an almost infinitely flexible space for its owner to fit whatever they want to it on the bed at the back.
For many, this will be their business or their livelihood. The IMV 0 can be turned into a fruit truck, a coffee shop, a cage for transporting livestock, or it can be used by emergency services, from ambulances to mountain rescue.
Such trucks are nothing new, but as a factory offering, it breaks new ground for Toyota, and it will be available soon in emerging markets such as Thailand from just $10,000 (£8250), with the famed Toyota reliability and durability thrown in for free.
This is true mobility, offering quite remarkable value and showing the flip side to any argument that Toyota has been slow to produce EVs: isn’t coming with new concepts like this to provide more affordable mobility in emerging markets just as significant?
Toyota is a global company, and unlike many that carry that title and try to impose one view of the world on everywhere, it understands different regional needs and demands.
The IMV 0 was demonstrated to me recently at Toyota’s new Shimoyama technical centre in Japan, where the brand also showed off its latest technology of a different kind: its new Arene operating system.
In development to arrive with its next-generation EVs from 2026, it shows Toyota looks as far into the future as anyone.
Some of its features include the ‘Interactive Reality in Motion’ function. This allows drivers and passengers to point at things they are driving by and ask the car for more information. You could like the look of someone’s coat and ask where to buy one, or get the opening hours of a restaurant and book a table. We had an early live demo, and while it was a bit sluggish, it was still impressive.
The engineers demonstrating had the humility to recognise the idea and concept may not work (or be useful) for all and, like other new technical breakthroughs in merging real and virtual worlds, could be seen as a gimmick (Google Glass, anyone?).
But the point of demonstrating such technology so early in development is to seek views and make sure it is not developed with an insular focus.
This is a good example of the openness and humility with which Toyota is operating. The closed, almost impenetrable approach of the company and its ‘our way is the only way’ approach in generations past has long gone with the improvements made at the company under the leadership of Akio Toyoda over the past decade or more.
Its latest slogan is ‘mobility for all’, and with the likes of the IMV 0 and a desire to continue to develop all powertrain technologies so it can continue to sell cars globally, Toyota clearly means it.