CHICAGO/NEW YORK ¨C Toyota Motor Corp. launched a Honolulu car-sharing service Tuesday that allows customers to use smartphones to unlock and start rental cars available by the hour or day. It¡¯s the latest service offered by an automaker that competes with ride-hailing and rental-car companies.

The service is called Hui, pronounced ¡°hooey,¡± which means ¡°group¡± in Hawaiian. Developed with local distributor Servco Pacific Inc., it uses a Toyota platform that tracks and analyzes who uses car-sharing and when. Toyota says it will use the data to better manage its supply of cars.

Starting at $9.95 an hour or $79.60 a day ¡ª including gasoline and insurance ¡ª customers can reserve and rent a Toyota Prius, Lexus RX 350 or other model at one of 25 parking stations for round-trip use. Toyota joins rivals such as Daimler AG¡¯s Car2Go and General Motor Co.¡¯s Maven in offering a service that competes with traditional taxis, ride-hailing services like Uber Technologies Inc. and rental-car companies like Hertz Global Holdings Inc.

¡°The program is simple to use and more convenient than a traditional car-rental service,¡± Zack Hicks, CEO of Toyota Connected North America, said in a statement.

Toyota also acquired a small stake in Uber in 2016, and last month it invested $1 billion in Grab Holdings Inc., Southeast Asia¡¯s top ride-hailing company.

Wedged between ocean and mountains, Honolulu is the midst of a building boom, and car-sharing has been suggested as a way to ease congestion, though results thus far have been mixed.

Servco CEO Mark Fukunaga told reporters on a conference call that he expects the service to expand throughout the state of Hawaii and eventually to the dealerships his company owns in Australia.

Hicks hinted at broader car-sharing efforts for Toyota but didn¡¯t provide any details.

¡°Hui is just the beginning for us.¡±