Owning a Car vs Ride-Hailing (Grab/TADA/Ryde/Gojek)

Ponder me this: Is it cheaper to buy my own car, join a car-sharing service, or continue using my favourite ride-hailing app? While common sense tells us that ride-hailing and car-sharing are likely cheaper options, the reality is not that simple. 

Owning a car is a fixed cost, but ride-hailing expenses go up with every trip you book. This means that if you are a heavy user of apps like Grab, TADA, Ryde or Gojek, you may cross a tipping point where owning your own car actually becomes cheaper for you.

Is this the case for most average Singaporeans? We have the answers below.

For background, this is what we did.

One of the most important sets of data we need concerns the cost of owning, maintaining, and driving a car in Singapore. Luckily, we have attempted a deep dive on this exact topic earlier this year, and will be borrowing some numbers from the linked article to help us out here. 

One of the main numbers we need is the distance of a typical trip, as ride-hailing services charge by distance. 

From our reference article, we derive the following: 

• Average annual distance driven per car: 17,500 km

• Average distance per trip: 23.97km (assuming two trips per day)

Thereafter, we can plot a trip with a similar distance into the respective apps - Grab, TADA and Ryde - to find out how much each platform would charge for the trip. For GetGo, we derived the estimated cost from the calculator on its website. Also, we will test this using a weekday trip during the evening peak period to make allowance for surge pricing.