At the forefront of this change is the e-Palette, a fully autonomous electric vehicle with a deceptively simple design. It is, at its core, a box with eight wheels. The interior can be empty or filled with seats, screens or shelves. Toyota thinks it could be used for mass transit, parcel deliveries and temporary accommodation -- maybe all three on the same day, provided the furniture is easy enough to swap out. And there's no steering wheel, pedals or gearshift to worry about: The vehicle will be completely driverless. It is, in short, a blank slate for urban transportation.

At the heart of the e-Palette is the Mobility Services Platform (MSPF), a software layer that Toyota is developing for a seemingly inevitable future in which nobody owns a car. With MSPF, drivers can request and unlock a vehicle with their smartphone. On the back end, Toyota has fleet-management tools, so any company -- it could be Toyota itself or a company that owns a bunch of its vehicles -- can keep tabs on its driverless army remotely. Bryce Merckling, who works on mobility services at Toyota Connected, calls the e-Palette the "physical manifestation" of MSPF.

"It's the platform for the platform, essentially," he said.