Toyota Motor Corp. is pushing deeper into the ride-sharing business.
Japan’s biggest carmaker 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 Inc. 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 Wednesday.
Automobile 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 reshape the current model of individual car ownership. Honda Motor Co. has also invested in Grab, its first in a ride-sharing company, in a partnership aimed at expanding motorcycle-hailing operations in Southeast Asia.
Toyota’s investment in Grab will be through the 6-billion yen ($55 million) Next Technology Fund set up in April by unit Toyota Tsusho Corp. for opportunities in innovative technologies, products and services.
Grab is aiming to raise $2.5 billion from the latest round of funding, of which it has previously announced $2 billion in investment from Didi Chuxing and SoftBank Group Corp. That will take Grab’s valuation north of $6 billion, a person familiar with the matter said in July.
Toyota will record and analyze 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.”
Carmakers globally are racing to place bets on which companies will emerge as the dominant players in ride-sharing. General Motors Co. has joined forces with both Uber and Lyft, while Volvo Cars had partnered with the former and Tata Motors Ltd.’s Jaguar Land Rover with the latter. Volkswagen AG has created a mobility services division under the Moia brand and invested $300 million in ride-hailing provider Gett Inc.
Beyond ride hailing, Toyota is also collaborating with US car-sharing company Getaround to promote the carmaker’s new mobility service platform. It started testing a new suite of car-sharing apps and services this month with Servco Pacific Inc. in Honolulu, Hawaii.