As the country celebrates the homecoming of its Olympic athletes — particularly double gold medal winner, Carlos Yulo — another set of challengers are set to make their mark on the global stage: the paralympic athletes.
The 2024 Paris Summer Paralympic Games will begin on August 28, 2024. Even here, Toyota will serve as a mobility partner, as part of its eight-year worldwide partnership with The International Olympic and Paralympic Committees.
Starting the impossible
As worldwide partner of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee, Toyota aims to encourage creating a peaceful society without discrimination through sports and a commitment to creating a sustainable society through mobility. To serve as its mantra as well as reflect the determination of the athletes participating in the games, Toyota continues its “Start Your Impossible” campaign.
The slogan marks Toyota’s commitment to supporting the creation of a more inclusive and sustainable society in which everyone can challenge their impossible. It also highlights Toyota’s mission to create a barrier-free society, and reinforces the company’s values of humility, hard work, overcoming challenges, and never giving up.
Ernie Gawilan
In Asia, Toyota partnered with 11 athletes from the region, including the Philippines. These two are Carlos Yulo and Ernie Gawilan for Para Swimming. They join more than 200 Global Team Toyota Athletes (GTTA), from across the globe, participating at the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024.
Competing in the Para Swimming category (200m Individual Medley, 400m Freestyle S7, SB7, SM7), Ernie Gawilan hopes to bring glory to the country.
Born with underdeveloped extremities from an after-effect of a failed abortion, he was taken care of by his grandfather as his parents left him when he was young. While being taken care of by his grandfather, he was able to learn swimming in the ocean. He discovered that the water gives him freedom. Passionate about dolphins as they looks so free in the waters, Ernie advocates for a sustainable environment (ocean) and hopes everyone can do their part.
Ensuring ‘Mobility for All’
For Toyota’s part, it will continue to provide solutions to enable the ease of movement for all during the Paralympic Games. The company will make available around 250 personal battery electric vehicles distributed to staff and volunteers to facilitate their movement around the Paris 2024 venues.
For wheelchair users, Toyota will provide wheelchair e-pullers. Some 200 e-pullers will be available throughout the Paris Paralympic Games opening ceremony to make sure that athletes in wheelchairs have easy access to join this unique event.
To ensure fair and easy access to these personal micro-mobility solutions in the Paralympic Village, Toyota will offer them as a shared mobility service powered by the Kinto Share mobile app. Sharing of these products will maximize their usage by Paralympians and staff, as well as keep the operations more efficient.
In addition to personal micro-mobility solutions, Toyota will deploy around 250 zero tailpipe emission electric Accessible People Movers (APM). Toyota’s APMs are designed to support all athletes, as well as organizers, volunteers, and spectators with physical disabilities, including wheelchair users. They will take on roles of main shuttle in the Olympic and Paralympic Village, and at the venues; some will in parallel move small goods across the Games and a number of them will be designated as an emergency relief vehicle. APMs will operate mainly inside the Paris 2024 security zones, bringing Toyota’s ‘Mobility for All’ vision into reality.
Toyota will also provide 150 wheelchair-accessible battery electric vehicles, like the Toyota Proace Verso, to support the mobility of the Olympic and Paralympic family members in wheelchairs. After the games, all vehicles will remain in Paris region where they will be used to provide specialised personal transport services to people in wheelchairs.
Overall, Toyota plans to provide 700 personal last-mile mobility products among other mobility solutions. This way, Toyota will ensure that athletes, volunteers and organizers have access to the most inclusive and sustainable mobility fleet ever seen at the Olympic and Paralympic games.
A more sustainable fleet
Sustainability is a significant part of Toyota’s commitment to building a better world, underlined by its Environmental Challenge 2050, by which date the company aims to achieve carbon neutrality at a global level – and in Europe by 2040. That is why Toyota’s multipath strategy, combining different electrified vehicles, is at the core of the Toyota fleet to be made available to the Olympic and Paralympic family at Paris 2024.