With more consumers than ever ordering vehicles or buying them sight unseen, Toyota Motor North America this year will try to shine a light into one of the darkest, most mysterious parts of the purchase: the complex logistics chain that gets new automobiles from the end of the assembly line to the dealership lot.
Toyota is by no means alone: Other automakers, including General Motors and Volkswagen, are working to make it easier for dealers and their customers to keep track of their new vehicles through the delivery process as though they came in a box and had been ordered from Amazon.
Toyota's effort, which it will introduce to Toyota and Lexus dealers at their National Automobile Dealers Association make meeting Sunday, March 13, and plans to implement this summer, is called "Project ETA" — based on the widely used acronym for "estimated time of arrival."