Only 27% of Grab drivers will be on the road in October. This is what's happening

If the story of Malaysia’s e-hailing drivers—your Grabs, Mulas, and MyCars—were an Avengers saga, right now we’re in Infinity War, Thanos snapped his fingers, and a number of the drivers disappeared.

Dropped out, to be accurate. When the government first announced the PSV (Public Service Vehicle) regulations for the e-hailing industry back in July 2018, there were concerns of this happening. The Malaysian E-hailing Driver’s Association (MehDA) estimated that 50% out of the 200,000 drivers in the whole country will drop out from the process. 

Things didn’t look good at the first deadline. On 12 July 2019, dubbed the soft landing, only 10% of the drivers managed to secure their license. But with only 3 months to complete the process, as the registration was only opened on 1 April 2019, more time was needed. So the deadline was extended to 12 October, but the extra time didn’t seem to remedy the issue. 

With the new deadline looming close, we are getting some firm numbers from Grab on their certified drivers. But it can sound a bit scary if you depend on e-hailing to get around.

Right now, only 27% of Grab’s drivers have their PSV license come 12 October. But what about the other drivers? Are they still in the process, or did they just…disintegrate?

We might only have 27 percent of Grab drivers...but the others are close behind

With the 12 October deadline getting close, it can be concerning to know only 27% of the drivers have their license ready. Would the other drivers be ready in time? At this point, we don’t know when they will be ready, but we know where they are in the process.

To make it easy for you, let’s imagine the regulatory process as a marathon race, with a few checkpoints in between, and getting your license as the finish line. We already know the number of those who’ve reached the end, so let’s go right back. So let’s go to:

Right now, some didn’t even start the race. 26% have dropped out completely from the certification process, tapping out before they even reach the first check point. These consist mostly of part-time drivers, who dropped out due to concerns with the time needed to go through the process, as well as the costs that come from the regulation process. They are unlikely to sign up anytime soon. They were Thanos-ed.

15% of the drivers are still completing their PSV training. To get through this checkpoint, the drivers would need to attend lectures at selected driving schools. When we went undercover to try the regulatory process, we found that most of them were fully booked for 2-3 weeks minimum. The wait time doesn’t look to go down anytime soon.

This is more of a waiting room of sorts, where the drivers wait for their number called. 17% have completed their training, and just waiting to take the exam. But from experience, we found that this can be quite an unpredictable experience. Due to the overwhelming number of signees, you don’t call the school— the school will call you when there are slots available.

It took us a week worth of wait for the call, and we were notified the day before. Protip: always have a blue pen ready with you, as well as your IC and driving license.

This is another waiting room of sorts. Right now, 15% have completed the process, and are waiting to receive their license. But we didn’t reach this point in our undercover effort, because admin still has his day job here, so we can’t be sure of how long the wait will be. But fingers crossed, if all goes well, the 15% will join the 27% with their license, to bolster the number of drivers on the road to 42%.

Certifying 200,000 drivers takes a liiiiiittle bit of time

Right now, it seems to be a bottleneck issue, and very much so. All the related bodies, such as Puspakom, JPJ and driving schools, are doing something unprecedented: certify 200,000 drivers to go through the certification process within 6 months. 

And 200,000 people is a big ask. To get a sense of scale: an average Malaysian secondary school has 842 students. So it would be like sending 237 schools worth of students to take their driving test, within 6 months.

But this doesn’t mean that everyone has been twiddling their thumbs waiting for the process to finish. Grab, in partnership with the many certification bodies, have tried to find ways to solve this bottleneck issue. 

With such big numbers to train, sending them all for live training can seem daunting, even for instructors with Zen-like patience. To work around that, up till 11 October, 11.59pm (not sure if 59 seconds also got, can try, PM result) there will be online training modules available for Grab drivers.

There were the people to certify, but what about their cars? I mean, there’s no online certification for cars right? Well, there isn’t an online VR test for your car to be certified, yet. But for now, Grab have partnered with Puspakom to increase the vehicle inspection hours, to allow more cars to be inspected daily. 

And once they’ve taken the training and inspection, there is still the issue of actually taking the test, to make sure the drivers have all the information down. Previously, Grab has worked with JPJ to hold mass exams. But that was only available until the soft landing of 12 July.

There were also concerns from the drivers about the new cost that comes from getting certified under PSV. This was a sticking point that have caused a few drivers, especially part-timers to drop out. But to encourage more signees, Grab have subsidised the licensing cost for the drivers, covering nearly 70% of the total cost. That covers things such as the driver training, medical checkups and the PSV licensing fee. They’ve also offered a pay-as-you-drive insurance, from as low as RM1 per day, instead of paying between RM400-800 annual insurance for their vehicle.

Be ready for an increase in waiting time

Reader: If Grab don’t have drivers, then I just use Other Car Hailing app la. gg ez. 

This problem isn’t isolated only to Grab. As mentioned this drop of drivers will affect all e-hailing companies. This means there will be less cars available, and a longer wait time regardless of which app you use.

If you’re used to getting an immediate booking (fuiyoh Gold/Platinum level user), be ready to wait a wee bit longer. For Grab, and this includes the plebs and not just platinum users, the current average wait time to get a car is 2.76 minutes. Which is just about at the second chorus of an average pop song. But with less drivers on the road, you actually might be able to listen to the whole song through. Post 12 October, the estimated wait time could go up to 6.36 minutes. Okay, one song and then a little bit into the next one. 

But keep in mind that this increase is relative for all wait times. If you’ve always waited 5 minutes, it doesn’t increase by 1 minute. If your average wait time is 5, it might even go up to 15 minutes. (Wait for Hans to get the accurate numbers)

Our wallets might feel a little bit of the pinch too. With less cars, the current drivers on the road will be like the hot girls at school: high in demand. And with the increase in demand, comes an increase in dynamic prices during peak hours. According to MeHDA, the high demand surcharges could cause a 50% increase in fares. But the surcharge would depend on how each company implements it.

To work around it, try booking your car a bit earlier, or outside of the peak hours of 7-9am and 5-8pm. 

How long will this last?

We looked into the crystal ball and we are...not sure. This is something new for all parties involved, so any estimates will be hard to make. So right now, there aren’t any firm numbers when the drivers will get their license, or for the rest of the drivers to complete the process. The only confirmed information is that there will be 27% of their total drivers, or 39,000 drivers on the road by 12 October.

And just to be clear, in case some of you might think that 12 October is the last day to get a license. It’s not! The application process is still open after the date. 12 October is just the deadline for current e-hailing drivers to get a PSV license, be road certified, and get to work. That would be quite restrictive if any and all potential drivers only have this date to get it settled by. New drivers, or drivers who are just fashionably late, can still sign up for the PSV license after the deadline.

And it’s unlikely for things to dramatically improve. In Grab’s experience, trying to push all the drivers through the bumpy path to certification didn’t go as planned. Along the way some reached the finish line, some had to stop at the side, but some decided that the journey to certification wasn’t worth it. This need for regulation process, instead of the more pick up and play approach from before, might make new drivers not come in to prop up the total numbers. 

So deep inside, even though some of us might hope that this will just be a temporary issue, and things will go back to the way they were, it doesn’t look likely. The e-hailing fleet numbers will stabilise at a point, but it won’t be the same as it was again.