And they say this is possible due to a revolution in car-sharing.
In May, Grab launched GrabHitch, a cut-price option that matches drivers and passengers travelling the same route at the same time.
According to a report in The Guardian, Uber is rolling out a similar scheme, called UberPOOL, in the region, with Jakarta becoming the 37th city worldwide to join it in May.
The Guardian quoted Leon Foong, Uber’s general manager in Malaysia as saying: “What we really want to do with our technology is put more people into fewer cars. We are not competing against the taxi industry, rather we are competing against total miles driven for every single vehicle on the road.”
The report said it is estimated that in Greater Kuala Lumpur, congestion costs the economy up to 2.2% of GDP, while in Malaysia as a whole, a third of urban roads were “at capacity or extensively queuing.”
Noting that the car had become a status symbol in Malaysia – and one of the country’s biggest drivers of personal bankruptcy – the report said heavy government subsidies and quotas on imported vehicles had encouraged Malaysians to buy locally made cars.
It said car ownership here was the third highest in the world, with 93% of people owning, renting or leasing a vehicle, double that of neighbouring Indonesia and the Philippines.
Uber, the report said, argued that it was not competing with public transport, but was simply extending its reach.
Data from May show that 24% of Uber trips in Kuala Lumpur begin or end at a train station, which Uber said suggested that commuters were using its service for the start and end of their commutes.
Grab has also announced projects to relieve congestion in the region, including a scheme to provide free GPS data to help public authorities manage traffic flow, and a partnership with the emergency services that will provide Grab with information so it can reroute its vehicles, according to the report.
Even so, The Guardian report added, the fear was that taxi apps would bring more cars onto the roads.
Initial studies by SPAD, Malaysia’s land public transport planner and regulator, show that Uber and Grab have 21,412 and 15,000 drivers respectively in Peninsular Malaysia. However 80% and 81% of these were part-time drivers, so they were likely already using a car.
The report said: “It is too soon to know if ridesharing will make a difference here, but Uber claims that elsewhere the launch of UberPOOL has already led to 100 million carshare rides, which it estimates has saved 6.8m litres of petrol and 16,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, equivalent to the yearly emissions of 3,380 passenger vehicles.
“But the crucial change that Uber says it would like to bring about is to make the transport ecosystem so cheap and convenient it no longer makes sense to own a car. UberPOOL is up to 50% cheaper than Uber’s other services, and Foong says the firm will soon have enough vehicles to create a service that was on-demand and therefore as reliable as a car.”
The Guardian quoted SPAD CEO Mohd Azharuddin Mat Sah as saying: “We see the potential [hailing companies] have to help demand-based mobility without worsening congestion and pollution in densely populated urban centres. Whatever the outcome, one thing is for sure, the biggest winners in the mobility transition will be commuters, who will have many more ways to get around.”