If you’ve been to Japan before all this COVID-19 business, you would have noticed this quirky Toyota taxi, particularly around Tokyo.

Called the JPN Taxi, it’s a specialized Toyota model that would have served tourists for the 2020 Olympics. With the Olympics now postponed, the JPN Taxi is doing a different job now: transporting COVID-19 patients.


Like Honda’s move with their Odyssey MPV, Toyota has quickly transformed a fleet of its JPN Taxi to safely transport COVID-19 patients while preventing any potential spread of infection to the driver. A plastic partition has been installed between the front and rear seats, while the climate control has been re-engineered for a one-way air flow from the front to the rear seats.

So far, Toyota has re-configured five of their JPN Taxi units to serve hospitals around the Chiba prefecture.