“I want you to do things that make you proud of being young, without losing your own personality and with dreams in your heart.” Akio Toyoda, President & CEO Toyota Motor Corporation
Farsighted businesses have long ago realised that investing in young potentials always pays off. Today, in Toyota Motor Europe’s headquarters in Brussels alone, we have 74 students doing their internships in various divisions and 50 graduates who were hired straight from university.
Students are welcome to work on their thesis while they are at Toyota, but this is by far not everything they do (and we are not talking fetching coffees or making copies!).
Welcoming and developing young professionals is also embedded throughout the network at local level. Today, we would like to share with you the story from Toyota Motor Deutschland in Cologne, Germany.
The story
Business start-up simulation game: Students develop business plan for battery charging systems
Toyota supports the German Founder Award for Students
Toyota Germany supports four students from the vocational college Cologne-Südstadt in a nationwide business start-up game. The young entrepreneurs have developed and presented the business model to improve the charging point infrastructure.
Last week the students have presented their business concept in the German Toyota headquarters in Cologne. The start-up concept is aimed at selling, installing and servicing quick charging points to various segments of customers. Toyota experts have made themselves available to the sustainable mobility enthusiasts and provided constructive feedback after receiving the concept presentation at the company’s headquarters in Cologne-Marsdorf.
The aim of the students’ visit was to benefit from the expertise of specialists and to get guidance on the project in the country’s largest business start-up game.
The concept
The target customers are private individuals and firms that own or manage parking spaces in urban areas. By purchasing and operating the quick charging stations they are to achieve ten percent profit margin, according to the plan. At the same time, the charging infrastructure could be improved and further increase the consumer appeal for electrically powered vehicles.
The feedback has been provided by two Toyota experts: Dr. Claudia Brasse (Executive Coordinator Strategic Development EV, Toyota Motorsport GmbH) and Dirk Breuer (Spokesman, Technology, Toyota Germany GmbH).
“We wish them success and we keep our fingers crossed for the final round in this coming week. It was our pleasure to have our time with them and we were very impressed by this business idea and the vision,“ said Dirk Breuer.
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