New Relic Japan. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, President: Shinichiro Konishi, hereinafter referred to as “New Relic Japan”), a provider of observability platforms for digital businesses, announced that Toyota Motor Corporation (Headquarters: Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture, President and Representative Director: Tsuneharu Sato, hereinafter referred to as “Toyota”) has introduced the observability platform “New Relic” to its car sharing service TOYOTA SHARE.

Background and History of Implementation

TOYOTA SHARE is steadily gaining popularity as a car sharing service that allows you to complete all steps of a car reservation, including usage and payment, with a single smartphone app. Users particularly like the ‘ease of use’ it provides by ‘turning your smartphone into the keys to your car.’ During the renewal cycle carried out in February 2023, Toyota expanded the number of available stations and vehicles, helping the service evolve into something even easier to use. Available stations exceed 1,200 locations as of November 2023.

TOYOTA SHARE enables customers to use its car sharing service 24 hours a day without handing over a physical key. To make this possible, Toyota has introduced "digital key technology" that allows customers to use their smartphones as car keys. The in-vehicle device "Smart Key Box (SKB)" plays an important role by controlling door unlocking/locking and engine starting from the app.

When renewing TOYOTA SHARE, Toyota significantly strengthened the system and introduced the observability platform "New Relic.'' The primary goal was to more accurately understand edge environments comprised of smartphone apps and SKB, and to quickly identify and resolve the causes of problems or defects that affect the user experience.

Implementation of New Relic and Expected Impact

The system that supports the TOYOTA SHARE service consists of the following: ① the "TOYOTA SHARE app" for smartphones; ② "Mobility Services Platform (MSPF) ^*, " a web application maintained on the cloud; and ③ the in-vehicle IoT device "Smart Key Box (SKB)." The smartphone app and Web application communicate via the Internet, while the smartphone app and SKB communicate via Bluetooth.

*1) TOYOTA SHARE app: Unlock/lock doors and start the engine using the encryption key downloaded from MSPF.

2) Mobility Services Platform (MSPF): A web application that issues encryption keys through user authentication based on smartphone application requests.

3) Smart Key Box (SKB): An in-vehicle IoT device that controls the unlocking/locking of doors and engine’s starting after authentication using an encryption key.

By incorporating agents into smartphone apps, New Relic can monitor app operation and error status, app communication time and results, and more. A unique challenge for TOYOTA SHARE was the collection and real-time visualization of logs from the 'SKB beyond the smartphone'.

By making minor modifications to match SKB specifications, Toyota has made it possible to obtain logs of communications and operations between the app and the SKB by using the SDK function of the New Relic agent built into the TOYOTA SHARE app. Furthermore, it has demonstrated that even if internet communication is disrupted in a mountainous area, the collected logs can be sent to New Relic and visualized in real-time once communication is restored.

With the help of such log collection and real-time visualization, Toyota has reduced response time to SKB inquiries from car dealers by approximately 60% per month. The TOYOTA SHARE app has also reduced the response time for customer inquiries by approximately 25%.

Atsushi Mizuno, System Development Group Manager, MSPF Planning and Development Office, MaaS Division, CV Company, Toyota Motor Corporation, stated:

"With the introduction of New Relic, we now have a system in place that allows us to understand the situation in real time when something goes wrong in our edge environments. New Relic is a highly effective method to more efficiently improve the quality of TOYOTA SHARE's services. We would like to further refine TOYOTA SHARE from the customer's perspective and evolve it into a platform that is even more valuable to all stakeholders, including customers."

Shinichiro Konishi, President of New Relic Japan, stated:

"We are honored that New Relic can contribute to improving the quality of TOYOTA SHARE service. In the future, we are confident that New Relic's end-to-end observability will be useful for gaining a bird's-eye view of the entire TOYOTA SHARE service, understanding app operating status and performance, and proactively operating services.”

*Mobility Services Platform (MSPF): An open platform for providing mobility service providers with a range of API-based functions required by mobility services.

■ For details on the case study involving "TOYOTA SHARE" adoption of New Relic, please see the following link. https://newrelic.com/customers/toyotashare

■ Examples of New Relic adoption by other customers can be found at the following link. https://newrelic.com/customers

■ New Relic fact sheets and logos can be found at the following link. https://newrelic.com/about/media-asset