Toyota has joined hands with Sumitomo Mitsui Auto Service Company to roll a new vehicle subscription offering with gamification components in Japan. The initiative is dubbed as Kinto, and it will provide 2 tiers: the first, dubbed as Kinto One, will let you to drive one Toyota car over a 3-year course for anywhere from $420 to $900 each month. When the tier turns out to be available in March 2019, you can select from the accessible Corolla Sport, Prius, Vellfire, Alphard, and Crown cars. The next tier dubbed as Kinto Select will offer you the ability to drive one of the accessible Lexus-branded cars for $1,630 each month for 3 Years.
Now, what actually makes Kinto possibly more attractive as compared to other leasing offerings is a rewards initiative that gives points on the basis of how well you drive. Toyota did not actually expound on how it will operate, other than claiming that it will “give points to users on the basis of their vehicle employment (such as for ecological or safe driving).”
On a related note, the issues with Takata’s possibly faulty airbags continue years after they started. Toyota earlier recalled more 1.7 Million vehicles all over the world, 1.3 Million of them in the US, over potential errors in airbag actuators. The new effort wraps cars made from 2010 to 2015 and follows weeks after Toyota launched a repeat recall for almost 65,000 vehicles after worries that an initial fix still was not secure.
The firm is not alone. Ford claimed earlier that it was recalling just suspicious 1 Million cars in the US owing to their airbags. This was already the biggest recall effort till now, with 37 Million vehicles needing fixes alone in the US. It is been costly, as well, with Nissan, Honda, and others setting aside millions of dollars to negotiate claims.