Patent ID: 11915164
Assignee: TOYOTA JIDOSHA KABUSHIKI KAISHA
Field: IT methods for management (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. An information processing apparatus that manages a plurality of vehicles used for a car-sharing service, the information processing apparatus comprising a processor configured to:
acquire, from a user terminal, information indicating that a use of a vehicle of the plurality of vehicles is desired;
make a determination whether the information indicating that the use of the vehicle is desired is (i) information indicating that reservation use for making a reservation in advance is desired or (ii) information indicating that on-demand use for accepting use of the vehicle stopped at an on-demand stand-by station is desired;
automatically calculate usable time of the vehicle that is desired to use, based on a result of the determination, by (1) considering a lead time for the vehicle autonomously driving to a desired boarding place if the reservation in advance is desired, (2) not considering the lead time if the on-demand use is desired, and (3) considering a downtime for the vehicle for both the reservation in advance and the on-demand use, wherein different vehicles of the plurality of vehicles have different downtimes;
transmit the calculated usable time to the user terminal;
transmit a type of the vehicle along with the usable time in response to a determination that the information indicating that the use of the vehicle is desired is (i) the information indicating the reservation use; and
acquire, from the user terminal, as application information for using the vehicle, one of application information for the reservation use or application information for the on-demand use; and
generate a vehicle dispatch command when the processor receives the application information for the reservation use, and transmit the vehicle dispatch command to the vehicle so to cause the vehicle to start autonomously driving to the desired boarding place, the desired boarding place being included with the application information,
wherein the same vehicle is allowed to be used for both the reservation use and the on-demand use.