Toyota and SoftBank to launch joint venture for mobility services in Japan

Toyota Motor and Softbank will launch a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) business in Japan by April 2019. Called Monet Technologies, the company will combine Toyota's mobility services platform and information infrastructure for connected vehicles with Softbank's Internet of Things platform. Initially, Monet intends to deploy an on-demand transportation service as well as corporate shuttles. By the second half of the 2020s, Monet says it will launch an autonomous MaaS fleet using Toyota’s battery-ele
October 15, 2018 Read time: 1 min
1686 Toyota Motor and Softbank will launch a Mobility as a Service (8356 MaaS) business in Japan by April 2019.


Called Monet Technologies, the company will combine Toyota's mobility services platform and information infrastructure for connected vehicles with Softbank's Internet of Things platform.

Initially, Monet intends to deploy an on-demand transportation service as well as corporate shuttles.

By the second half of the 2020s, Monet says it will launch an autonomous MaaS fleet using Toyota’s battery-electric vehicles, called e-Palette. The vehicles will deliver meals with food prepared inside the vehicle and provide a hospital shuttle service where medical examinations can be carried out onboard. These vehicles can also serve as mobile offices, the company says.

Related Content

  • April 15, 2021
    €10.9m grant kick-starts German AV project
    Government-backed Kelride seeks to integrate autonomous vehicles into public transport
    Read More
  • October 1, 2015
    Toyota bringing advanced ITS technology to mass-market models
    By the end of 2015, Toyota will make a new intelligent transportation system (ITS) safety package available on three models in Japan. The package, named ITS Connect, uses Japan's standardised ITS frequency of 760 MHz to receive and share data transmitted by external infrastructure and other vehicles. ITS Connect uses vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication to provide drivers with the kind of safety information that cannot be picked up by onboard sensors. This includes
    Read More
  • February 20, 2019
    MaaS Market London conference attracts global experts
    A plethora of global mobility experts is heading for ITS International’s 2019 MaaS Market Conference, reflecting the increasing pace of Mobility as a Service deployment. Colin Sowman reports Mobility as a Service (MaaS) cannot exist without the digitisation of transport services - and digitisation is without doubt the biggest challenge the transport sector has ever faced. It will create more changes over the next five to 10 years than the transport sector has seen in the past 100 - and there will be winn
    Read More
  • October 22, 2018
    MaaS transit does Dallas
    What started five years ago as a mobile ticketing app is evolving towards a full MaaS offering for the US city of Dallas, Texas. Colin Sowman finds out why and how. When it was launched in September 2013, GoPass was the first multimodal, multi-agency transit fare payment app in the US. Introduced by the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (Dart), GoPass combines a mobile ticketing app with a trip planning function and it is also accepted by Trinity Railway Express, Trinity Metro and the Denton County Transportation
    Read More

Highlighted Content