Mobility Super Apps Are Becoming EV Super Consumers
Across Asia, mobility super apps are deploying EVs, in a big way.
Grab is the everyday everything app in Southeast Asia. It is like Uber, Doordash, Instacart, Venmo, Betterment… all in one. One more thing Grab recently started doing: deploying electric vehicles.
In 2018, one electric car was sold in Indonesia. In 2019, 24 were sold. Then, in January 2020, Grab deployed 20 electric cars in a pilot and said it planned to buy 500.
Neighboring Singapore had its first electric car in 2015. That number grew to 1,120 by the end of 2019. Among them, 200 had been bought and operated by that same Grab.
Didi Chuxing is China’s leading mobility app. It also sells groceries, microloans and cloud servers, and it is an AI and autonomous driving powerhouse. One more title that Didi holds: it has the world’s largest electric vehicle fleet on a ride-hailing platform.
By the time China had a total of three million electric cars on the road in mid-2019, Didi Chuxing had registered 967,000 of them on its platform.
The statistics are telling: mobility super apps are operating a significant share of the electric cars on the road in these countries.
Here is a roundup of EV announcements by Asian mobility super apps:
Shared mobility and electric mobility, merging on the same lane.
Shared electric mobility is seen as the golden ticket to decarbonizing the transportation industry, but the path towards sharing and the path towards electrification have, for the most part, run in separate lanes.
Today, most shared cars are not electric. Ride-hailing, carsharing, and peer-to-peer rental popularized the use of shared mobility. These platforms started from the premise that cars had been way underutilized. They thrived on helping drivers and car owners make the most use of their existing vehicles, which run on gasoline.
Most electric cars are not shared. Electric cars began as a luxury purchase. Until very recently, if one depended on cars to run their business—such as a gig driver, a mobility service operator, or a logistics fleet owner—it was hard to justify the cost of buying new electric cars and installing the supporting infrastructure.
That is why, at Uber, the largest mobility platform of the developed world, EVs only accounted for 0.15% of the miles logged on its platform in the U.S. and Canada between 2017 and 2019.
But in countries where private car ownership is still low—19% in China, 4% in Indonesia and 2% in India—there is a golden opportunity to make a leapfrog advance, skipping privately-owned gasoline cars altogether and hopping straight onto shared electric cars.
It’s hard to tell a gig driver to scrap the cars they currently own and buy an electric one instead. It is easier to say: We’ve got more demand for ride-hailing and last-mile deliveries than ever. We need new drivers and, by the way, we have a promotion to help you make a higher income if you sign up to drive an EV.
It’s hard to tell a car owner to consider a lifestyle that runs on mobility service apps. It is easier to say: Buses and subways are overcrowded and expose you to higher risk of COVID infections. Owning a car in this city is a lot of money and work. Use our rides and car rental services instead.
Postscript:
With the exception of China’s Didi Chuxing, most of these mobility super apps are only starting: deploying its first tens, hundreds or thousands of EVs. However, they wield a great deal of power in shaping the way that people and goods travel in their respective markets. Much more so, I would argue, than Uber does for the U.S.
I am excited for the next decade to come and be an observer as the transition to shared electric mobility accelerates around the world.