Message from the President

The operating environment surrounding the Automobility segment is currently experiencing substantial volatility as the trend toward electrified vehicles is propelled by decarbonization efforts and as technological innovations, such as connected vehicles, have advanced, and as businesses based on new ideas arise from market entry by players from other industries. In this environment, we are leveraging the strength of our complete, industry-leading lineup of mobility services (corporate and individual auto leasing, car rental, and other services) to advance growth strategies for expanding our businesses and strengthening our operating foundation.

Strategies to expand our businesses include further enhancing current operations via differentiation through the proposal of high-value-added products and via customer retention efforts through digital transformation and AI technologies to uncover customer needs. We are advancing projects for achieving non-organic growth with the goal of supplementing previously lacking functions and expanding our business scope. We are also redoubling our approach toward new technologies and decarbonization by means of creating EV value chains and enhancing marketing approaches through data analysis and utilization.

As for strategies to strengthen our operation foundation, we will educate and train human resources while accelerating business process reengineering to achieve further improvements in operational efficiency using IT.
The Medium-Term Management Plan 2027 (Medium-Term Plan), which began in fiscal 2023, laid out our vision of becoming the top mobility service company in Japan. We will provide innovative, high-quality services to contribute to the realization of a sustainable, eco-friendly, and people-friendly mobility society with an emphasis on customer happiness and employee happiness.

Under the Medium-Term Plan, in addition to refining our core business areas of corporate and individual auto leasing, and car rental services, we are also pursuing initiatives to establish a new pillar of profitability in next-generation business areas to resolve social issues and achieve profitability as well as creating new ventures to address previously lacking functions.

In our core business areas, we have been taking actions to enhance added value and develop new businesses. In particular, NCS started offering new AI-equipped telematics services, while NRS has expanded its branches handling the Self-Rent-A-Car service, which doesn’t involve a face-to-face transaction, and introduced EVs into its fleet.

In next-generation business areas, we began joint research with Kansai Electric Power Company in September 2023 on a storage battery system that reuses EV batteries as a part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen the EV value chain. In March 2024, we began participating in verification tests for fully automated modular battery swapping stations conducted by ENEOS Holdings, Inc. and Ample Inc.

In addition, we took a major step toward the coming era of autonomous driving in February 2024 by investing in T2 Inc., which is commercializing a self-driving truck service, and May Mobility, Inc., a U.S.-based company that develops autonomous vehicle (AV) technology with the goal of deploying and disseminating AVs. We are also focusing on commercializing new mobility services to help resolve social infrastructure issues such as the declining birthrate and aging population, as well as the shortage of drivers.

Going forward, we will take advantage of our Group fleet of some 700,000^* vehicles to promote collaborations with investees and partners while shifting from a product-oriented perspective to a market-oriented-perspective to advance activities that break down conventional approaches.