Toyota Motor Europe has teamed up with the folks over at Our Future Mobility Now * to help bring tomorrow’s drivers and leading European manufacturers together at a live, creative event this summer.

Our Future Mobility Now is a project that brings together the mobile generation of the future and Europe’s leading vehicle manufacturers. Involving Toyota and other European manufacturers, the project is looking to build a community that imagines how the vehicles and transport we use will evolve and influence 21st Century life. Europe’s brightest young talent are invited to get involved and have a say on the big issues facing the transport industry, such as:

Last month, I was proud to hear that Toyota Motor Europe (TME) was the joint winner of the 2010 Award for Best Belgian Sustainability Report. The other joint winner was the retail clothing store C&A.

Last Friday I attended an EcoDriving training session here at TME. It was led by Bert Bosmans from Ecolife, a Belgian NGO that TME has worked with for some years to promote EcoDriving across Europe. I chose for the simulator based training, as I wanted to see what the 10000 other people across six countries who have followed this training since 2007 had experienced.

A few days ago Toyota France participated in the opening ceremony of our first Sustainable Retailer in La Rochelle in the west of France.  This is the result of more than 5 years work between Toyota Motor Europe, Toyota France, Toyota Financial Services, the dealer group Toys Motors and his architectural team.

I was recently lucky enough to be on vacation in the mountains. While I was riding up the mountain on the ski-lift with some friends I noticed that there seemed to be a lot fewer trees affected by acid rain as compared with my recollection of some years ago.  If this is true, then I hope it has a lot to do with the wider use of electricity from renewable sources. We believe this is a very important step to take to have a more sustainable business.