Japan’s biggest car maker will invest an undisclosed amount
in Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading ride-hailing operator, and said it
will work with the company to provide services in the region. The latest
deal comes a year after Toyota bought a small stake in Uber
Technologies as part of alliances it is stitching together to explore
new revenue models.
"Through this collaboration with Grab, we would like to
explore new ways of delivering secure, convenient and attractive
mobility services to our fleet customers in Southeast Asia," Shigeki
Tomoyama, a senior managing officer at Toyota, said in a statement on
Wednesday.
Vehicle manufacturers are working with and competing against
technology companies to figure out how to make money from services to
drivers as automation, electrification and on-demand transportation
threaten to re-shape the current model of individual car ownership.
Honda Motor has also invested in Grab, its first in a ride-sharing
company, in a partnership aimed at expanding motorbike-hailing
operations in Southeast Asia.
Toyota’s investment in Grab will be through the ¥6bn ($55m)
Next Technology Fund set up in April by unit Toyota Tsusho for
opportunities in innovative technologies, products and services.
Grab is aiming to raise $2.5bn from the latest round of
funding, of which $2bn in investment has already been announced from
Didi Chuxing and SoftBank Group. This will take Grab’s valuation north
of $6bn, a person familiar with the matter said in July.
Connected services
Toyota will record and analyse driving patterns in 100 Grab
cars in Singapore, and offer recommendations on what connected services
it can provide Grab drivers, the two companies said in separate
statements. "We are confident this will benefit our driver partners,"
Grab co-founder and CEO Anthony Tan said in one of the statements. "We
look forward to exploring other ways to collaborate with Toyota in the
future."
Car makers globally are racing to place bets on which
companies will emerge as the dominant players in ride-sharing. General
Motors has joined forces with both Uber and Lyft, while Volvo Cars had
partnered with the former and Tata Motors’s Jaguar Land Rover with the
latter. Volkswagen has created a mobility services division under the
Moia brand and invested $300m in ride-hailing provider Gett.
Beyond ride hailing, Toyota is also collaborating with US
car-sharing company Getaround to promote the car maker’s new mobility
service platform. It started testing a new suite of car-sharing apps and
services this month with Servco Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The Toyota city-based car maker is boosting spending in what
it calls the "crucial fields" of artificial intelligence and other
advanced technologies to as much as 25% of its total research and
development budget, from about 20%. President Akio Toyoda has said a
"paradigm shift" is underway in the automotive industry, forcing a
re-evaluation of traditional business models.
The danger of falling behind became clear in May, when
then-Ford Motor CEO Mark Fields was forced out after losing the
confidence of the board and of investors that he could keep pace with
the rapid pace of change in the industry.
For its part, Grab — which counts more than 1.2-million
drivers across seven countries — has also been expanding partnerships
beyond car makers. It’s collaborating with Tokyo Century on leasing and
rental cars for drivers; it is integrating its services in Singapore
with CapitaLand’s network of shopping malls, serviced apartments and
offices; and, it has teamed up with the Lippo Group, the Indonesian
conglomerate founded by billionaire tycoon Mochtar Riady.
In Southeast Asia, Grab claims to have a 95% share in
third-party ride hailing and 71% in private-vehicle hailing. The market
is expected to increase five fold to $13.1bn by 2025, according to a
study by Google and Temasek.
Bloomberg
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