Elixir powers first Car Share Service from Toyota

Toyota has just launched its first global car sharing platform, operated by Servco Pacific, Toyota’s distributor in Hawaii. The Hui service utilises Toyota’s proprietary global Mobility Service Platform (MSPF) and a consumer facing app.

Hui offers a new round-trip, station-based car share program, available to users 24/7. Seventy Toyota and Lexus vehicles are available for reservation through the Hui mobile app, by the hour or day at 25 easily accessible locations throughout Honolulu. The vehicles initially in the program include the Toyota Prius, Prius Prime, Camry XSE, as well as Lexus RX 350 and RX F Sport vehicles. Hui vehicles are parked in marked, reserved stalls for easy pick-up and drop-off.

The app supports a range of fleet management tools, as well as driver authentication and payment management. In addition, Hui vehicles are equipped with Toyota’s Smart Key Box, which generates a digital key that allows users to lock and unlock, as well as start vehicles via their smartphone.

Toyota Connected and Servco developed the service together as one of the first public applications of MSPF, the core ecosystem for leveraging the potential of connected vehicle systems to support the development of new mobility businesses – such as car-sharing, ride-sharing and remote delivery.

Toyota Connected is using Elixir as part of the backend system that makes up MSPF. It provides the API for mobile and web applications, as well as doing the geo processing such as whether a vehicle is inside or outside a geofence.

To learn more about how Toyota Connected is using Elixir, watch the following videos:

• Toyota's Shared Component Library - Tony Ward - EmberConf 2018
• Streaming GIS - Lightning talk, ElixirConf 2017
• Elixir with Kafka - Mathew Gardner - ElixirConf 2017
• Managing state in distributed Elixir - Jerel Unruh - Lonestar ElixirConf 2018
• Elixir - The Toyota Way - Powell Kinney - ElixirConf 2017

By 2020, Toyota Connected plan to have most new vehicles sold in North America and Japan sending information to their cloud. Analysing traffic patterns, driver behaviour and connecting drivers with infrastructure and other information is only part of what Toyota Connected will do, as it focuses on creating new services and products to keep the car as a beloved companion.

Powell Kinney, Chief product owner at Toyota Connected, will be giving a keynote at Code Elixir LDN, 16 August 2018. His talk will be on ‘Elixir for the Long Haul.’

He will discuss designing for longevity with Elixir and Erlang/OTP for a platform that will empower mobility at the global scale for years to come. His talk will focus on the challenges companies face when shifting from a software focus to platform focus, and what it will require in terms of the day-to-day implications for developers.

Toyota Connected’s approach to software development empowers teams to build for the long-term while still being able to adapt to changing features. The challenge for developers will be maintaining an ever-growing platform in the face of a rapidly changing mobility landscape. At the same time, Toyota Connected is interested in building a platform that powers more than just a single mobility use case—that instead provides for the whole range of mobility services.

There is still time to register for Code Elixir LDN.