Grab Philippines is planning to launch its new carpooling service in December to provide commuters with a cheaper option to commute during the holiday rush.

Grab Philippines Country Head Ronald Roda said the concept behind this new service is patterned after the group order feature in GrabFood that allows multiple people to add food items to a shared cart.

The transportation version of this feature will allow passengers to have multiple pick-up points with a common drop-off destination.

Likewise, passengers can be picked up from a single location and later dropped off at different areas.

Roda said the service is currently under a pilot test in Metro Manila.

“It's been up for a while this year. We haven't advertised because we have been optimizing driver behavior and routing,” the executive said.

“We're now at a point where we think it's finally ready for the market,” he emphasized.

For commuters trying out the feature, lower fares can be expected since the cost of a regular Grab ride will be shared among passengers.

Grab, meanwhile, will provide subsidies to encourage the participation of its partner drivers.

“From a driver's standpoint, we just need to make sure we compensate for effort,” said Roda. “Otherwise, they won't do it.”

Roda said the company is targeting to launch this by December, with additional tweaks included, in anticipation of the surge in demand over Christmas.

He said the holiday is the peak in demand for ride-hailing, typically requiring additional cars to efficiently serve commuters making last-minute shopping for the festive celebration.

In line with this, Grab is targeting to onboard additional vehicles ahead of the holiday season with the upcoming release of new slots for transport network vehicle service (TNVS) firms.

Last year, the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) opened up 5,000 TNVS slots equally distributed among ride-hailing firms operating in the capital region.

“We don't know what the number is because they're not all ours these days, but we expect a good number of them to be able to serve Christmas demand,” said Roda.

There are currently around 40,000 TNVS slots for Metro Manila, down from about 60,000 before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Roda, however, admitted that reaching this number could be a challenge among TNVS firms as demand has not been the same amid the popularity of work-from-home schemes.

“Pre-pandemic, the number one use case for GrabCar was [the] office. Today, it's leisure. So it's changed because of habits, work, etc. Even peak hours have changed. And so it's taken a while for both demand and supply of cars to come back,” he explained.