TOYOTA CITY, Japan — Imagine zipping down the highway of tomorrow in a self-driving pod car. You're on a long-haul, cross-country trip; you don't have time to stop for a restaurant.
With the push of a button, the meal is ordered. Before long, a drone catches up to your speeding vehicle. It hovers near a roof portal, and in comes a boxed lunch of club sandwiches.
This vision for meals on wheels is far out, but suppliers are conceptualizing, developing and gearing up to produce such products and technologies. In Japan, Toyota Boshoku Corp., one of the world's biggest auto suppliers, sees innovations such as this, and dozens of others, as a road to growth.