Grab gets approval to test its autonomous vehicle services with the public in Singapore

[SINGAPORE] Ride-hailing giant Grab, in partnership with WeRide, has started accepting selected members of the public to test its autonomous vehicle (AV) services on Monday (Jan 12) in the Punggol district of north-east Singapore. 

Several members of the media, including The Business Times, were invited to experience one of the two AV service routes that Grab will be servicing in Punggol.

After Monday, selected members of the public, such as grassroots advisers and Punggol residents, will be invited to try Grab’s AV service before the service is officially opened to the public within the next two to three months, or by the end of April.

“I would say it’s quite a milestone for us to get to this point,” Dennis Wong, head of strategic projects at Grab Singapore, told BT.

“There are other steps we took like road shows, vehicle tests and certification, but we’re finally moving to the phase where we will truly be able to test the vehicles at scale and get feedback.”

The route that received approval from the Land Transport Authority (LTA) for community testing is 10 km long, and connects residents in Matilda Court and Punggol Clover to Punggol Plaza and Oasis Terraces. The latter are malls that house grocery stores, clinics and food outlets. 

The community testing phase is the next step before transport operators are given the green-light to run services commercially. Wong said pricing for consumers can be revealed only at a later time. 

The initial phase of AV services in Singapore will function as a shuttle, meaning that they will serve a fixed route with designated stops.

LTA said the AV shuttles that received approval for community testing completed more than 10,000 km autonomously without incident. 

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Grab, in partnership with Guangzhou-headquartered WeRide, will operate two of three shuttle routes in Punggol. Singapore-headquartered multi-modal transport operator ComfortDelGro will operate the third route in Punggol in partnership with Pony.ai, which is dual-headquartered in Guangzhou and Fremont, California.

LTA said the other two routes are still undergoing familiarisation, and that more details will be announced in due course. A ComfortDelGro spokesperson said the company is making “good progress with thorough preparations” for the roll-out of its AV shuttles.

Grab has a fleet of 11 AVs, comprising 10 five-seaters and one eight-seater Robobus, to service its two routes, while ComfortDelGro has a fleet of five five-seater AVs for its route.

Grab’s AV fleet will run weekdays from 9.30 am to 5 pm, and ComfortDelGro’s fleet will run daily at the same times. 

The community testing phase will allow both transport operators and AV software providers to gather more data to fine-tune operations before an expected commercial launch, as it now includes passenger interactions.

The road ahead

Punggol was selected as the first neighbourhood to trial such AV services due to a lack of public transport options, and because AVs could complement the current offerings in the neighbourhood.

Authorities said previously that if the trial in Punggol is successful, then Tengah, a new neighbourhood in Singapore’s west, could be the next location to have such services.

LTA told BT that it hopes to “better understand the needs… of both commuters and other road users” from the Punggol deployment. It said this includes understanding operational requirements, community acceptability and demands, before determining the next phase of expansion.

The regulator added that it “will continue to engage interested AV developers and operators on their deployment plans in Singapore”.

Grab Singapore’s Wong said the first deployment in Punggol will help the company understand the operational realities of running AVs on the ground. He declined to give a specific timeline on when Grab will scale up from its current fleet of 11 vehicles, or when the shuttle service will become a point-to-point operation. 

“Right now we are focused on primarily operationalising this Punggol shuttle service, really understanding the nuances of how AVs operate,” he said.

“So we are really focusing our efforts on building up this ground operation and this base, from which we can then further evaluate how we should expand this to other services.”

Clarification note: A previous version of this article stated commercial service instead of open to the public.