The country’s leading auto brand for 20 straight years now continues to ask questions, listen to them, and then develop the answers. Last Friday, Toyota Motor Philippines Corporation (TMP) inaugurated a wholly owned spinoff that provides a suite of imaginative solutions to pervasive questions and concerns in mobility – while opening a whole new revenue stream for the company.
Toyota Mobility Solutions Philippines, Inc. (TMSPH) will immerse itself in “the development and offering of a range of ‘new mobility solutions’ that will… (create) value for society through a service business model. Along with automotive manufacturing and distribution businesses, TMP furthers its effort to provide safety and comfort for Filipinos with TMSPH’s Vehicle Usership (VU) platforms, available for individuals and the business sector.” In a release, TMP President Atsuhiro Okamoto said that TMSPH will “better shape the industry’s role in building our modern societies and enriching human lives” while accelerating toward Toyota’s “global mission to ‘Produce Happiness for All’ and vision to create ‘Mobility for All.”
Tapped to lead the wholly owned subsidiary is longtime Toyota executive Ma. Cristina Fe “Tini” Arevalo, who is expected to keep the laser focus on the continued development and marketing of technology and business solutions to move people and goods. TMSPH styles itself as a logistics and transportation partner for businesses of all sizes (with a special focus on micro, small, and medium enterprises), and a mobility enabler for people who may not have the appetite or means to acquire a vehicle in the traditional ownership sense.
“In a nutshell, (we are) an integrated mobility solutions provider (which utilizes) systems and applications that will maximize efficiency in transportation of people and goods. So, these systems and applications can result in higher efficiency and improve business profitability,” said Arevalo in an exclusive interview with this writer.
The initial menu of offerings include a fleet-connected service, on-demand shuttle booking app, car sharing or rental, a logistics matching service, and fleet management service. TMSPH will work with Toyota Financial Services Philippines Corporation (another wholly owned, separate subsidiary) “in promoting and managing units under its full operating lease product called Kinto.”
In his speech during the TMSPH launch program last week, TMP Chairman Alfred Ty said that contemporary demands – as well as the vision of Toyota Motor Corporation head Akio Toyoda – call for an examination of vehicle ownership versus usership. “These two streams compel us to shift from just being a manufacturer and retailer of motor vehicles to being a full-scale mobility solutions provider. This is, in fact, our very inspiration for today’s launch of Toyota Mobility Solutions Philippines: To continue in our promise of producing happiness and winning the smiles of Filipinos by creating mobility for all.”
Added Arevalo, “It was during the pandemic that our global president Mr. Akio Toyoda announced his vision of transforming Toyota from a traditional automotive company to a mobility company, and Toyota Motor Philippines happens to be one of the first to respond to that call. And we immediately set up a business unit within Toyota Motor Philippines in order to lay the groundwork for all these modular systems that we are currently offering.”
TMSPH is the “first of its kind among Toyota affiliates in the Southeast Asian region” to offer the services, which are “projected to modernize domestic mobility systems and Internet of Things (IoT), potentially creating employment opportunities for technical but customer-centric professionals.”
TMP Director Vince Socco later opined that the Philippines as a market makes sense for these services. “We have the youngest population in the ASEAN region. (We’ve seen people as) very open to new sorts of technologies and possibilities. And I think that’s one of the reasons that we felt there is an extremely ripe opportunity for us to exploit.” The timing could not be better as well, added Socco, with the economy rebounding after the advent of the pandemic in 2020.
“We believe that motorization will continue to expand. As mentioned by Chairman Ty, the current density of vehicle population in the Philippines per 1,000 people is only 41. It’s the lowest in the region, I think, just above Vietnam – but below Singapore, below Thailand, below even Indonesia. So, with this economic growth, there is certainly an opportunity again for us to be able to partner not necessarily with private owners but, more importantly, with business owners. We believe this is still an untapped segment of the market. And when we talk about business owners, the necessity of productivity solutions and efficiency solutions are all that more important,” he posited. These two factors – the adaptability of the Filipino people and the ubiquity of MSMEs – are seen by Toyota as making for a very ripe opportunity for TMSPH and its portfolio of services. “We have to forward the agenda,” declared the executive.
Added Arevalo, “Well, frankly, Toyota Motor Philippines’ core business, which is automotive manufacturing and distribution, remains to be the center of the Toyota ecosystem. However, Toyota’s goal is to provide mobility for all. And not everybody can afford to own a car, right? So, through Toyota mobility solutions, we can provide a usership platform in partnership with Toyota Financial Services Philippines. And we can also provide, these usership platforms for as short as an hour to up to three years or five years – depending on the need of the customer for occasional requirements. Tying it all together, in a simple formula, is that Toyota provides both the hardware and the software that can maximize utilization of the vehicles.”
She underscored that there is no shift envisioned from ownership to usership. Toyota will continue to develop, build, and sell vehicles. “What we’re doing is offering an alternative for those who, first, do not want to own vehicles because they want to be asset-light, or they don’t want the usual hassle (of) attending to monitoring its mileage for servicing and renewal of registration or insurance. It’s really a lot of work, right?”
But there is much work to do, continued Arevalo, describing the awareness of the concept of usership in the country as in its “infancy.” Having said that, there hopeful signs – particularly in large companies that are already seriously into leasing vehicles and not owning them. “For companies, they want to be asset-light; they want a hassle-free usage of vehicles. So for them, it’s very practical, but on the personal side there’s that sentimental value that, you know, usership cannot provide,” she admitted.
For now.