DOCTORS nag us to eat more greens, but the company best known as the home of Mercedes-Benz here wants to make food delivery itself green – as part of a wider push to safeguard its future by going big on electric mobility.

Cycle & Carriage Singapore (C&C) announced on Thursday (Mar 23) that it is tying up with Foodpanda to trial electric motorcycles from Gogoro, a Taiwanese firm that pioneered battery swapping for two-wheelers in 2011.

Its pure electric scooters have no charging downtime because they run on removable battery packs that riders can replace with freshly charged batteries in just six seconds. C&C operates two swapping stations, which are like battery vending machines, at its service centres on Alexandra Road and Ubi Road 3.

The Land Transport Authority granted Gogoro permission to run a sandbox pilot to validate battery swapping technology last year. The brand said in September that C&C would be its exclusive distributor and would operate and install its infrastructure.

This week’s announcement was the second this month from Cycle & Carriage involving electric vehicles (EVs). On Mar 8 the dealership group – which also handles Citroen, Kia, Maxus (a Chinese electric commercial vehicle brand) and Mitsubishi here – signed an agreement with China’s Great Wall Motor to represent Ora in Singapore.

The company intends to launch the electric car brand’s Good Cat, a stylish hatchback aimed at younger, design-conscious drivers, in June this year. Ora is working on a slightly de-powered version of the Good Cat that will allow it to be sold here with a Category A certificate of entitlement (COE), the cheapest kind that can be used for cars. C&C will house the brand’s showroom at its headquarters on 239 Alexandra Road.

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Wilfrid Foo, the managing director for parent company Jardine Cycle & Carriage’s Direct Motor Interests division, which includes C&C’s operations here, told The Business Times he sees several major reasons to be bullish on EVs, whether they have two wheels or four.

“With the Singapore government’s push for cleaner-energy vehicles, we should continue to see growth in EV adoption,” he said. “The availability of more EV models and charging points will also help support this growth. As new registrations of diesel cars and taxis are to cease from 2025, we may also see more transport operators switching to a greener fleet.”

Yet, it is hard to see Gogoro’s scooters or electric cars from a fledgling Chinese carmaker moving the needle much on Cycle & Carriage Singapore’s underlying profit, which grew 13 per cent to US$32.9 million in 2022, a year Foo described as a tough one because of COE scarcity and global supply chain disruptions.

Foo, who took the top job at the Direct Motor Interests division in 2022, said he expects 2023 to be similarly challenging, but noted that C&C has been taking steps to respond to a changing market for years. One example – the company set up its leasing arm in 2019 in anticipation of today’s pricey COEs. “We noted a change in mobility preferences and due to the high cost of car ownership in Singapore, some customers prefer alternative solutions instead,” he said.

Last year, the leasing subsidiary set up myCarriage – an online car rental platform which lets users check the availability of the vehicles in its fleet in real time. Foo said the business saw “good growth”, and that he expects it to keep expanding this year.

After spotting a demand for green logistics, C&C also launched a new business arm to let local companies make the switch to electric vehicles by subscribing to what is effectively EVs-as-a-service. “We are the first to market as well as the only automotive player providing this turnkey service. We provide the electric delivery vans and delivery drivers as well as manage the charging and maintenance of the vehicles,” he said.

Customers that have used the service to help decarbonise deliveries include Gogox (which works with Ikea here), Uniqlo and Guardian Health & Beauty. This week’s deal with foodpanda looks like a similar arrangement, but is more about “ascertaining operational viability” with Gogoro’s scooters, Foo said.

Having so much going on outside of its core business raises questions about whether C&C still sees a future in retailing cars, especially after the company disposed of its showrooms in a sale-and-leaseback arrangement this year. The deal raised S$333 million but also raised eyebrows in the industry.

Doubters could be reading too much into it. “On an ongoing basis, we review options to optimise and unlock capital within our portfolio. There are no operational changes resulting from this arrangement,” Foo noted.

When signing the distribution agreement for Ora with Great Wall Motors, he said in a statement: “We are always on the lookout for exciting and innovative brands to bring to Singapore.” Translation: C&C is more interested in good old-fashioned car retail, not less.

Having said that, Foo is keenly aware that the industry is ripe for disruption, whether because car companies seem increasingly willing to disintermediate their own dealers and sell direct to consumers, or because the car industry itself is changing.

Foo revealed that C&C has nailed down the forces that could affect its business model, but lists them down in a way that speaks of the anxiety that comes with disruption. “Internally, we coined the acronym ‘Scared’, which stands for all the disruptions we foresee in the automotive industry: ‘Shared mobility’, ‘Connected cars’, ‘Autonomous vehicles’, ‘Regulatory changes’, ‘Electrification’, and ‘Demographics changes,’” he said.

“Each area comes with its unique challenges and opportunities. Car retailers need to foresee the disruptions that will affect their respective business areas and plan ahead in order not to lag behind or risk becoming obsolete.”

In a way, tapping new revenue sources would be true to form for C&C. The company has its roots in nutmeg trading and was renamed Cycle & Carriage in 1899 to signal its pivot to the disruptive technologies of its time: bicycles, motorcycles and eventually cars. These days, Foo’s challenge is to make sure that the company is Scared, but not shiftless.