How Toyota Ensures An Incredibly Low Breakdown Rate For 80,000 KM Per Annum Cars

For private-hire vehicles (PHVs), downtime doesn’t just waste time, it hurts wallets too. Every minute a PHV is on the road counts to the hirer-partner, who is able to take on additional trips a day with the extra time thereby helping his/her bottom line.

James Wong

25 Aug 2022

Well, is it any surprise that Toyota comes to the rescue to make things even more efficient and convenient? Already the gold standard for perceived reliability, Toyota takes things a step further with its Total-Care Service, which is already provided for GrabRentals’ Toyota fleet from 2022. Read more here for details of Borneo Motors Singapore’s (BMS) three-year extended partnership.

We met up with Khee Siong Ng, Director of Aftersales, Inchcape Singapore, in a teleconference to find out exactly how BMS manages to reduce downtime for a maintenance service from industry standards of 70 minutes to a record time of just 30 minutes, as well as smaller vehicle breakdown rates at only 0.7 per cent, which is much lesser than the industry standard at 3 per cent. Mind you, these are for cars that scurry non-stop around Singapore roads and clock some 80,000 km per annum, or more. That’s nearly a million kilometres after a 10-year COE cycle.

Cars with such high mileage yet require less maintenance! How is that possible?

Toyota Motors Corporation has developed the Mobility Services Platform (MSPF), an information infrastructure for vehicle connectivity, to collate driving data from Toyota’s in-vehicle data-transmission device, TransLog.

The data collected on the system is stored thereafter which then informs GrabRentals about vehicle conditions and driving behaviour. Through these statistics, BMS can also proactively prompt GrabRentals hirer-partners to come back for regular servicing. I think PHV drivers are a busy bunch and alerting them about their next service makes it easier for them to keep their cars in tip-top condition.

How does MSPF feed data back to BMS?

There is a SIM card integrated into the Translog. Vehicle information is sent via satellite to the information server.

Amazing. Is this system for all of BMS’ brands?

It is currently available for Toyota and Lexus.

How about grey imported vehicles? Is MSPF compatible with them?

Yes - it works with all Toyota and Lexus vehicles.

Do you foresee it being offered to other fleet customers?

Yes, in the future this is possible within other parts of the Inchcape Group that also have fleets that clock high mileages.

You say that the system helps the GrabFleet travel on the road safely. Does it mean that you track drivers’ behaviours?

Yes, to a certain extent. We believe in taking care of not just the car but also the driver. That’s the ecosystem we are trying to build. It will track their braking and acceleration. There is also a real-time video feed that works like a dashcam that is also integrated into the system. It is meant for education and to possibly incentivise safe driving behaviour, in the future.

Will servicing intervals then vary based on driving style?

No, intervals will remain the same. The system however will alert us if there are any warning lights or signals and we will then prompt the driver to return back for a check.