TOYOTA Motor Corporation has revealed it is working on an autonomous transport platform that will form the basis for its transition from car- and truck-maker to becoming the provider of choice for autonomous delivery and passenger transport platforms.

At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company launched the concept of an e-Palette, to be provided and serviced by dealers.

Unlike a conventional palette, which is the ubiquitous wooden carrier of goods with the help of forklifts and trucks, e-Palette is a series of self-contained, electronically powered and computer-controlled delivery platforms that can be tailor-made for on-demand business deliveries as well as on-demand human (and animal) transport.

The e-Palette concept is being taken so seriously as a transformational initiative at Toyota that none other than president Akio Toyoda, in announcing the concept, referred back to the time when Toyota was a weaving loom maker and that his grandfather, Kiichiro Toyoda, did what was thought impossible at the time and transformed the company into a car-maker – ultimately the world’s biggest.

Mr Toyoda, the third generation to run Toyota, told the CES audience: “It is my goal to transition from an automobile company to a mobility company. I am determined to create new ways to move and connect our customers – across the country, across town or across a room.

“Technology in our industry is changing quickly and the race is on.

“No longer do our our competitors just make cars. Companies like Google, Apple and even Facebook are what I think about at night because we didn’t start out making cars either.”

Mr Toyota said that the industry was moving from cars and software to platforms.

“It is the platform that will be the backbone for mobility, for car-sharing, for any number of services that we want to make possible.”

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He said the e-Palette was a key to providing mobility-on-demand and mobility-as-a-service and mobility commerce.

Such is the importance of the e-Palette to Toyota’s future it has forged a relationship with Amazon, Pizza Hut, Uber, and DiDi – a major Chinese ride-sharing company with more than 450 million users across over 400 cities in China.

The partners, which include Mazda, will collaborate on vehicle planning, application concepts and vehicle verification activities.

The e-Palette platforms will come in three sizes, ranging from four to seven metres with a low slung obstruction-free floor, wheels (including dual wheels) in each corner and a box-like open interior that can easily be adopted for a range of uses from ride- sharing, mobile offices, food delivery services, hospital transport, modular goods delivery for manufacturing and construction.

The concept includes individual retail display opportunities and well as retail clusters of multiple platforms gathered in the one place.

Mr Toyoda said: “Today you have to travel to the store. In future, with e-Palette, the store will come to you.”

He said that by combining a number of e-Palettes in one place, several businesses could quickly create a mobile hub for services ranging from medical clinics to markets to entertainment to festivals.

Toyota even envisaged someone sending out a platform of unwanted household and personal items into the town as a mobile garage sale for potential buyers to sift through and buy.

The “plug and play” platform will be openly available to companies that want to build new mobility businesses, he said.

“Every e-Palette can be re-configured for different uses in one day all managed by the Toyota mobility service platform and supported by our retail network.”

The control systems can be either those developed by partner companies or that provided by Toyota but the core system, called Toyota Guardian, will always be in control as a safety net.

The system will be launched at the 2020 Olympic Games of which Toyota is a sponsor.

By John Mellor