Toyota Motor North America is teaming with students from Alabama A&M University on an initiative to help solve mobility issues.
David Fernandes, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama, announced at a Friday event on the Alabama A&M campus an initial grant of $300,000 to fund the initiative, which includes scholarships for students accepted into the program.
But what, exactly, is a mobility issue?
"A mobility problem in this area could just be how people travel from one location to another," Fernandes said. "It could be the community, how they travel - a bus, for example. If there is not an opportunity to travel from one place to another, they're not mobile. And we want it to be an eco-friendly product. So that will be for the students to use their brain power to actually come up with a very fuel efficient, eco-friendly product."
The grant from Toyota continues a long-running relationship between the Japanese automaker and Alabama A&M.
"We selected them for this project because of their focus on renewable energy, strong STEM programs and a history of preparing well-qualified graduates," Fernandes said.
The program will begin in the 2018 fall semester.
"This, truly, is another great day on The Hill," Alabama A&M President Andrew Hugine said.
Fernandes said that Toyota may ultimately benefit from the knowledge and experience gained by the Alabama A&M students.
"It will also allow the students some hands-on experience and they can also learn some Toyota-way problem-solving skills along with critical thinking skills," he said. "All of that is to feed the pipeline for STEM education. For us, those are our employees of the future. It's also great for Huntsville because of the advanced manufacturing that we have."
The students can help make the Alabama A&M campus and Huntsville a better place, too, said Ernst Cerbert, facilitator of the project and professor in the College of Agricultural, Life and Natural Sciences.
"Creating a clean, safe and more efficient environment for the campus proper, as well as the immediate and larger community, has been a major thrust of AAMU for decades," he said. "Through this project, we will engage students with hands-on learning to address real world problems."
The event was attended by members of the state legislature, the Huntsville city council and Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle.
"Alabama A&M is the first recipient of this program, a program designed to bring mobility to citizens who need it the most in our community," Battle said. "When we recruited the Toyota-Mazda plant, we were not just recruiting two of the most innovative manufacturers. We were recruiting two of the most innovative mobility companies. Mobility is defining the auto industry. It's not just about your car, it's about what you do with it."