SINGAPORE: Ride-hailing company Grab on Tuesday (Dec 18) said commuters using its service could see cheaper fares in the long term, as drivers leverage more cost-efficient maintenance services using data to bring their expenses down.
The comments by Mr Russell Cohen, Grab’s head of regional operations, came as the company and Toyota Motor announced that the carmaker would offer its specially designed mobility services for ride-hailing companies to 1,500 GrabRentals-owned Prius’ from next year.
Mr Cohen said at the launch event that Grab “hopes to offer cheaper fares with the cost savings” accrued through this service as well as other measures aimed at improving business operations.
However, he told Channel NewsAsia at the sidelines of the event that the cost savings will not “flow through quickly or meaningfully” to commuters in the short term.
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FASTER, MORE EFFICIENT CAR MAINTENANCE
Total-care Service – which uses data collected from sensors embedded into the vehicle to provide drivers with more cost-efficient and timely maintenance services – is the world’s first service specially developed for ride-hailing companies, said Toyota.
Among the services provided include fleet management, automotive insurance and vehicle maintenance packages.
It works by collecting driving data via an in-vehicle device called TransLog. Toyota has been testing this since 2016, and had previously fitted 100 of Grab’s vehicles for this purpose.
The Total-care Service is the first fruits of Toyota’s US$1 billion investment in the Singapore-headquartered company.
Mr Cohen said that he expects the drivers of the 1,500 Toyota vehicles to begin reaping the benefits from next year.
For instance, these drivers will receive real-time notifications when their brake pads or tyre threads are wearing thin and need to be replaced, Mr Cohen said.
The telematics dashboard shows information such as a vehicle’s model, distance travelled and operation status.
This is important for ride-hailing drivers as their vehicles typically travel five times more than private cars, he said. On average, a private car travels 18,000km a year compared with about 90,000km for ride-hailing cars, Grab said.
Toyota’s Singapore authorised dealer Borneo Motors has also partnered the carmaker to build an Intensive Care Stall (ICS) facility, which uses digital technologies such as voice recognition systems and automated vehicles to cut down the time needed to maintain a vehicle, the company said in a separate press release on Tuesday.
In a video showed at the launch, it said the ICS resulted in average maintenance time being reduced from 70 minutes to half an hour.
GROWING GRAB’S TOYOTA FLEET
Grab on Tuesday also said it plans to grow its fleet of Toyota vehicles in the region by 25 per cent by 2020. It declined, however, to reveal the size of its GrabRentals fleet or how many Toyota vehicles it owns.
It intends to introduce the Total-care Service to all Toyota vehicles in its fleet eventually.
Additionally, Grab and Toyota are also working with Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance, a Toyota-affiliated insurance company, to develop telematics-based car insurance for Grab’s fleet.
A Grab spokesperson told Channel NewsAsia that the details are still being worked out and that he would not be able to share how much cost savings are expected.
He did note that given that the data collected for the insurance will be from the car, and not from mobile apps as existing products on the market are using, the information will be more accurate.
When asked at the launch event if Toyota plans to make this service available to other ride-hailing service providers, Toyota Motor Asia Pacific president Susumu Matsuda said there are no plans to do so.
Toyota is, however, “taking into consideration” bringing the Total-care Service offering to consumer vehicles in the future, added the executive.
Toyota Motor Asia Pacific president Susumu Matsuda sharing the Japanese carmaker’s mobility vision at Tuesday’s launch event.
