Toyota designs COVID-19 ambulance based on Hiace

MANILA: From face masks, financial assistance, mobility solutions, medical products, including ventilators, to assisting in the development of drug versus COVID-19, Toyota continues to provide help in whatever way it can during this crisis.

Its latest effort, while not surprising, is absolutely jaw-dropping. Toyota has redesigned the existing Hiace and turned it into the most high-tech COVID-19 transport vehicle you’ve ever seen.

With the help of Toyota Auto Body Co., Ltd., the Hiace was outfitted with various systems and equipment to make it an “airborne droplet circulation control vehicle.”

It comes with an interior barrier that creates a forward compartment, which houses the driver's seat and front-passenger seat, and a rearward compartment, which houses the rear passenger seat area. An exhaust fan continuously expels air from the rearward compartment out of the vehicle, helping to prevent the air in the rearward compartment from circulating to the forward compartment.

Toyota listened to the needs of frontline workers and medical facilities to determine the exact specifications for the Hiace so that the virus does not spread as the vehicle is used to transport COVID-19 patients.

This has been done under the Kokoro Hakobu Project, which is a nationwide initiative by Toyota, Toyota sales outlets in Japan, and their employees to provide continuous and long-term support to disaster-affected areas in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and now to people who have contracted and are suffering from COVID-19, as well as to the medical professionals, Japan's central government, and local governments in Japan fighting the disease night and day.

This ambulance is currently being used by the Showa University Hospital in Shinagawa City, Tokyo, Japan.

Photos from Toyota

Also read: Toyota mobilizes massive global resources in fight vs. COVID-19