LAS VEGAS ― Ron Guerrier, vice president and chief information officer at Toyota Financial Services, bedazzled Auto Finance Summit attendees last week with footage of the Toyota v1 Fun car ― a project that’s at least 20 years down the pipeline. The concept car features showy perks like a high-tech body embedded with a display that allows drivers to change the exterior to any image their heart desires. The interior changes to match their mood. Remember mood rings, anyone?
Fun aside, from green-digital content management to automated processing, Guerrier pointed out that technology makes life easier for both dealers and consumers. After presenting a lesson on social media outlets, Guerrier said: “We don’t want to be behind the eight-ball on technology, but how do we personalize the highly tech-reliant environment?”
While demonstrating Toyota’s impressive suite of cyber-finance products, where customers can do virtually anything finance-related, Guerrier said that compared with what’s in the pipeline, current technology is old. Think connected cars, smart devices, ubiquitous bandwidth ― presence- and context-aware ― 3D-holographic video conferencing, avatars, wireless and mobile, head displays cars that are sensing-enabled, cloud-based, personal tech ecosystems.
“We have to embrace technology, and understand it,” Guerrier said. “It’s our bread and butter.”
