Tokyo/Singapore — By pumping $1bn into ride-hailing firm Grab, Toyota stands to gain a passenger-side view of tens of thousands of cars across Southeast Asia, tracking how fast they drive, how far they travel, and the time they spend stuck in traffic.
The Japanese car maker said it aims to install its TransLog driving recorder devices into Grab’s fleet of lease cars to access the data on driving patterns that will be crucial to its push into the nascent mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) industry.
"Only ride-hailing companies have good, extensive data on usage, so automotive makers want to be connected with that," said Egil Juliussen, director of research for automotive infotainment and advanced driver assistance systems at IHS Markit.
Grab already monitors driving behaviour through its app to increase ride safety, sending e-mails about speed and braking, for instance, to its drivers, such as Singapore’s Rennu Mahajan. "With this system, it keeps me in check," said Mahajan.
It will get even more vehicle data with Toyota, which has been harvesting data through TransLog since 2016 in sales and trials with taxi firms and car-hailing operators, including Grab. The data gives Toyota insight into fleet management as it develops services, including futuristic concepts such as pay-per-use mobile restaurants.
The latest deal, announced last week, gives Toyota access to a single pool of vehicles which potentially eclipses all others. This will allow it to capture a volume of data that would be difficult to collect from private cars that are only used for less than 5% of any given day, often on routine commutes.
In return, Grab will be able to expand services, such as food delivery and digital payments, using Toyota’s $1bn investment — the biggest by a traditional vehicle maker in a ride-sharing app maker.
The deal reflects how vehicle makers are clamouring for access to ride-hailing firms’ extensive user bases through a spate of partnerships, as they compete with techn companies to develop autonomous cars and next-generation transport services.
Toyota’s vision of such services includes convoys of shuttle bus-sized, self-driving, multi-purpose vehicles used, for instance, as pay-per-use mobile restaurants and hotels, which the company plans to develop and customise for retail customers.
"There’s data about the car, and then there’s also data about the service — how many customers drivers have, what the average mileage is, where the rides are concentrated," said Juliussen. "Having that picture in all the major [Southeast Asian] cities, that becomes very valuable."
Toyota and Grab will be able to use the data for possible collaboration on data-driven services such as vehicle diagnostics and customised insurance plans based on driver usage. The data will also help Grab maintain efficiency in fleet maintenance as it expands deeper into Southeast Asia where it operates in more than 200 cities. It has said it wants build the region’s largest car rental fleet by the fourth quarter of 2018.
"Vehicle maintenance costs, insurance costs, these are bread-and-butter issues for ride-hailing drivers," said Chua Kee Lock, CEO of Vertex Venture Holdings in Singapore, an early Grab investor.
Industry experts said Toyota could expand its data service to more mobility firms, such as Didi Chuxing, Uber and Amazon, with which it has separate partnerships. "This partnership with Toyota will keep Grab’s platform ’sticky’ and give drivers less incentive to switch to competitors," said Chua. "This is Grab’s edge over the long run."
Reuters
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