Region news - Kaimai

Snapper and swells for Kaimai trip

A recent Kaimai region fishing trip saw eight MTA members take on lumpy seas in search of fishing glory. Staff from Speedy Lube & Tyre, Mills Collision Repair, and All Spark Auto Electrical, along with committee member Mark Hammond from Tordoff Autos, enjoyed a day on the water despite challenging conditions.

“It was quite a lumpy swell and a couple of the guys were sick for most of the day,” Mark says. Although the conditions weren’t ideal, Mark says some good fish were caught but they didn’t get their limit.

Pilot flies in the face of car ownership

At

first glance, carsharing automotive

industry.

After all, their whole approach is to reduce vehicle ownership by having public pool cars that anyone can hire and use for short periods.

But for MTA member Tony Bowater of Nelson dealership Bowater Toyota, it’s a key step in the evolution of the industry.

Tony’s running a pilot called The Toyota Mobility Project, with the support of Toyota, which mirrors mainstream carsharing schemes.

“It is quite foreign to us to a certain extent that we are seen to be promoting something that potentially reduces car ownership, but I think we need to be looking more holistically at our businesses and understand the impacts and the pressures we are seeing and the appetite for change that has to be accepted,” Tony says.

“It’s very exciting and very

Schemes Seem

a

Natural Enemy Of The

frightening, but if we don’t evolve, we will look like creatures and industries in the past that didn’t evolve and now no longer exist.”

The project uses the same style of app as that of platforms like Mevo and Cityhop and harnesses his dealership demonstrators to make them available to the public for as little as $15 an hour. He describes it as a “slow burn” pilot scheme to understand what the market nuances are to make carsharing work.

Sharing is caring

The idea and the principle behind the project are to ensure mobility is available for everyone, with customers only using the car for as long as they want, then parking it ready for the next person.

“We don’t want to impact the dealership it’s available on the app for the public to utilise.

“What we want to do is utilise our demonstrators and make them available across our community so people can pick up a safe, reliable, sensible mode of transport when they want it 24/7.”

What’s to stop people booking a car out for a week even though it isn’t in spirit of the scheme?

“There is no real ability to stop people booking long-term usage, but this is something we try to discourage as the sustainability of this model is about multiple users of the vehicles and not having the vehicles parked in someone’s carpark for days on end,” Tony says

Discoveries

On offer is a range of Toyota products, mostly hybrids, and including a BEV Lexus 300e and a Hilux.

Canada can-do

Tony jumped at the opportunity to run the pilot when the idea was in its initial stages.

opportunity to pilot it, I would put my hand up. That’s how it all started.” rental business or take away the person coming here for a holiday and wanting to hire a car for a week; we are not in that market,” Tony says.

There’s no subscription involved in the scheme, just an app and a current, full, unrestricted driver’s licence.

“All they need to do is book it and when they turn up, they press unlock on the app, they get in and drive away, they don’t need to interact with us,” he says.

Toyota supported Bowater with the app and all the electronics, and Tony says following on from the pilot he wants to put a business case to Toyota for it to be widely available.

He swaps 28 vehicles between carshare and demonstrator, using a booking system, so when the vehicle is not needed at the

“We have the Hilux in the mix because it may convince people that they can buy and own something more sustainable and when they need a Hilux to tow or pick something up, they have access to one and only use it for the time they need it.

“It could also potentially be a way of getting new models to the market and getting the market comfortable with them so when they are available, they are well received.”

He says a surprising discovery during the pilot was a family who traditionally had a fleet of three or four cars, and have gone down to one knowing that they have access to extra transport if they need it using the Toyota’s Mobility Project app.

Tony is also talking to organisations in the region to see if cars can be parked in different areas of the community, not just at the dealership yard.

“I have been fortunate to be on the Champions advisory panel with Toyota, and Mark Young at Toyota mentioned they had explored this app. He’d seen it out in Canada working and bought the technology back to New Zealand and they trialled it internally at Toyota with their staff and their fleet of cars.

“I was intrigued by it and thought if there was an

He says the intention is to run the pilot to the middle of 2023, but he can see it progressing further.

“There are so many things we are learning on the way and for the Bowater Motor Group founded in 1945, 78 years of a journey doesn’t mean anything if we don’t continually focus on where the next step is and what we need to do to improve ourselves.”