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

Claim 16:
17. An information processing method executed by an information processing apparatus that manages a plurality of vehicles used for a car-sharing service, the information processing method comprising:
acquiring, from a user terminal, information indicating that a use of a vehicle of the plurality of vehicles is desired;
making 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 calculating 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;
transmitting the calculated usable time to the user terminal;
transmitting 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;
acquiring, 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;
generating a vehicle dispatch command when the information processing apparatus receives information for the reservation use, and transmitting the vehicle dispatch command to the vehicle so to cause the vehicle to start autonomously driving to the desired boarding place,
wherein the same vehicle is allowed to be used for both the reservation use and the on-demand use.