Toyota’s Uber Deal Makes Breeze a Competitor

Following Toyota Financial Service’s announcement yesterday that it will launch a leasing program for Uber drivers, the captive now seems to be competing with Breeze, a hot San Francisco-based startup.

At this point, TFS “doesn’t know” if it will partner with Breeze for private-labeling the deal, according to Justin Leach, manager of public relations at TFS.

Toyota and Breeze have to date enjoyed a tight relationship. Breeze solely leases Toyota Priuses to Uber and Lyft drivers in six cities nationwide, for example.

“Everything is up for exploration,” Leach told Auto Finance News. “The whole point of the investment is to look at what could be. We are probably going to look at everything — what comes of that I can’t begin to tell you. There is so much potential.”

Breeze declined to comment.

Toyota Motor Corp. announced yesterday its strategic investment in Uber as part of a broader initiative to boosts its mobility efforts, which the company expects to close by the end of the month.

“Since we are in the very early stages of exploring collaborative opportunities, it’s too soon to announce exactly which type of financing programs we may offer,” Leach said. “But we’re really excited to be partnering with Uber and we expect that later in the year, we’ll have more to share.”

“I think a lot of companies are exploring new ways of delivering secure, attractive mobility services for customers, and we will probably see more of this in the industry,” Leach added.

This is a new chapter in Uber’s strained relationship with Breeze. In 2014, Uber reported to Pando that it had begun to deactivate Breeze cars discovered on its platform. According to one anonymous driver speaking for others affected by this cessation, this upset drivers, who feared that their “source of income could disappear overnight.” At the time, Uber’s head of communications for the Americas said that Uber was “not deactivating the driver, just the vehicles.”

For unknown reasons, this deactivation tactic didn’t pan out. Uber ceased these deactivations after only a month.

This article was written by Natalie Mattila and Brad Bergan.