We love cars. We love the freedom and the mobility they offer. When you want to roam on your own schedule, or get someplace fast, nothing else will do.
But we love the driving part of car ownership. Not so much, the insurance. The safety checks. The ever-changing price of gas. That weird safety light that keeps going on and off. The “Honey, can you wash the car this weekend?”
We’re big believers in simplifying our lives. We’re always asking ourselves, “How can we make room for more of the good stuff, by letting go of as much of the other stuff as possible? And how can we do that for others?”
That’s why we built Hui, Hawai‘i’s next-generation car share service.
The Lexus RX will be one of the vehicles in our fleet of shared vehicles.
Say what? It’s not ride-sharing, like Lyft, where someone else drives you. In car share, you’re behind the wheel. And unlike traditional car rental services, everything is done through your smartphone: you can reserve a vehicle, walk to a Hui car, let yourself in, and drive away without ever talking to (or waiting for) a human.
Some other things members of our Hui never have to deal with: insurance, maintenance, roadside assistance, cleaning (inside and out), overnight parking—even gas expenses, since each car comes with a prepaid gas card for members to use.
Best for last: Hui uses Toyota’s revolutionary Smart Key Box (SKB) technology, which makes Hui one of the first car share programs to use a smartphone to unlock a car. That means no extra car keys or plastic cards to lose.
We see Hui as more than a first-class urban life hack (although it’s that, too). It’s our vision to help create a city, a bit like San Francisco or New York, where owning a second car, or even a first car, is optional. And, a little less like LA, by taking cars off the road. Imagine living or working in Honolulu’s urban core. Often, you walk. When you need to get from one neighborhood to another, you can take The Bus or hop on a Biki. To go farther, use Rail. But when you need to haul a trunk full of groceries, or get someplace Rail doesn’t go, there’s always a Hui stop nearby, geographically coordinated with other forms of public transit for easy access. In other cities, one car share vehicle has been proven to take about 20 cars off the road. Imagine that.
We’re excited, because Hui frees up time and money that our members already know what to do with. And we’re excited because it’s fun to peek into the future and see yourself there. Don’t take our word for it. Motor Trend and Bloomberg Technology are talking about us too.
We’re proud of being a local company backed by Toyota’s powerhouse reliability and technology. But we’ll always exist for you, our hui ‘ohana.
Watch this space to see a big part of Honolulu’s mobility future unfold.