Toyota Ha:Mo – Future City Transport?

Toyota is trialling their vision of future city transport in Toyota City with Ha:Mo using COMS single seat electric cars.

With our cities getting ever more congested and pollution a big concern (the NOX and particulates), car makers and local governments are seeking ways to make getting around in a city kinder to the air.

London has the ‘Boris Bikes’, but Toyota City – home of Toyota’s biggest factory – is trialling one of Toyota’s visions of future individual transport for our cities – Ha:Mo.

Ha:Mo – which stands for Harmonious Mobility – is a scheme that lets participants use single seat electric cars called COMS – which stand for Chotto Odekake Machimade Suisui (smooth, short rides into town) – to get to where they’re going.

Users in the trial get a smartphone App that shows them the best and quickest routes to where they want to go, and if the App says the COMS then they can grab one of the little electric cars from unmanned vehicle sharing stations at Chukyo University and two local train stations.

At the moment, Toyota has just 100 participants in the trial and 10 cars, but they’re planning to extend it to 100 cars and 1,000 participants with the cars available at up to 20 stations.

It’s a great idea and will probably work well in an ordered and respectful society like Japan. But in London, we’d be amazed if the poor little COMS cars were in one piece at the end of the first week after the Herberts vandalise them.

And those that are left would probably be parked outside the house of a commuter who couldn’t be arsed to walk the 200 yards home.