The service is called Hui, pronounced “hooey,” which means “group” in Hawaiian. Developed with local distributor Servco Pacific Inc, it uses a Toyota platform that tracks and analyses who uses car-sharing and when. Toyota says it will use the data to better manage its supply of cars.

Starting at US$9.95 an hour or US$79.60 a day – including gasoline and insurance – customers can reserve and rent a Toyota Prius, Lexus RX 350 or other model at one of 25 parking stations for round-trip use. Toyota joins rivals such as Daimler AG’s Car2Go and General Motor Co’s Maven in offering a service that competes with traditional taxis, ride-hailing services like Uber Technologies Inc and rental-car companies like Hertz Global Holdings Inc.

“The program is simple to use and more convenient than a traditional car-rental service,” Zack Hicks, chief executive officer of Toyota Connected North America, said in a statement. The largest Japanese automaker also acquired a small stake in Uber in 2016, and last month it invested US$1 billion in Grab Holdings Inc, Southeast Asia’s top ride-sharing company.

Wedged between the ocean and mountains, Honolulu is the midst of a building boom, and car-sharing has been suggested as a way to ease congestion, though results thus far have been mixed.

Servco CEO Mark Fukunaga told reporters on a conference call that he expects the service to expand throughout the state of Hawaii and eventually to the dealerships his company owns in Australia.

Hicks hinted at broader car-sharing efforts for Toyota but provided no details, “Hui is just the beginning for us.”