Toyota to flog 10,000 aaS wagons to Avis Budget rentals

Ride these iron donkeys and everyone (else) will make a packet

Toyota is to flog around 10,000 connected cars to vehicle hire biz Avis over the next three years.

"Toyota's mobility services platform will provide Avis Budget Group with enhanced connectivity and visibility into their fleet, and bring travellers increased control and convenience over their rental experience," Zack Hicks, chief exec of Toyota Connected North America, said in a statement.

Avis Budget Group ("a leading global provider of cars for rent mobility solutions") will use Toyota's "proprietary Mobility Services Platform" to "enable greater operational and rental fleet efficiency", burbled the statement.

That platform supplies telematics data, including odometer and fuel tank contents readings, and will also allow rental car drivers mobility solutions customers to find their cars mobility solutions after leaving them in a supermarket car park mobility solutions storage solution while doing the weekly shop an immersive holistic permanent rental experience.

(Alright, we'll stop.)

"Upon checking out, Avis can already have visibility to the vehicle information as opposed to having to verify once the customer's on-site and manually processed," Toyota spokesperson Ming-Jou Chen told Automotive News.

A Toyota distributor in Hawaii (an island-state about 1,750 miles west of the US mainland) is said to be trialling "driver identification and authentication plus payment", according to the company.

As time goes on, more manufacturers appear to be realising that the future of connected vehicles lies mainly in B2B x-as-a-service offerings where gathering data about users is itself a money-spinner. Bosch, for example, is trialling the concept with its electric scooter ride-sharing service, while "self-flying" air taxi startup Kitty Hawk is also pitching its aircraft squarely at airline-type companies, stating publicly that it will not sell to consumers.

Riding someone else's aaS gives them several opportunities to make money out of you.