Chief executive officer of AirAsia Group Tony Fernandes has shown a glimpse of the company’s forthcoming endeavour with ride-hailing, as shared on Fernandes’ social media accounts, including on LinkedIn.
Pictured here is a line-up of 10 MPVs comprised of the Toyota Vellfire and Alphard, suggesting the vehicles that will serve in the AirAsia fleet.
Fernandes wrote that “ride-hailing AirAsia-style will be different from Grab and Uber,” (the latter having departed the Malaysian market following Grab’s acquisition of US-based tech firm’s Southeast Asian business in March 2018), with the CEO pointing to a “different culture, different cabin and more.”
Fernandes noted in his post that AirAsia has “always been a delivery company, delivering (by plane) people to destinations the world over, [and is now] delivering food, packages, fintech products and even online education. Now hitting the road,” the note by Fernandes read, without stating further details or a specific timeline.
The AirAsia push for ride-hailing and delivery services enters a challenging time as the Malaysian economy manoeuvres around restrictions aimed at containing the pandemic; to that end, the Malaysian government offered a RM60 million allocation last year for the 120,000 ride-hailing drivers in the country, of whom 99.8% received their one-off RM500 assistance last June.
Another one-off injection of RM500 for more than 100,000 drivers of taxis, school buses, tour buses, rental cars and e-hailing vehicles was offered earlier this month.
Separate from its road transport ride-sharing endeavour, AirAsia revealed in March that it has plans for a flying taxi service to be readied as soon as next year, according to a Bloomberg report at the time.
GALLERY: 2018 Toyota Alphard 3.5 Executive Lounge facelift
GALLERY: 2018 Toyota Vellfire 2.5 facelift
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For that 10 Toyota Vellfire and Alphard MPVs, Airasia should ask for at least RM 6mil allocation from govt…
That’s very generous.
Instead of giving cheaper ride like
Innova, Carnival, Starex.
Sliding door with much legroom is very practical and fast while picking up passengers.
Don’t really need to use the boot. Reducing much traffic Q.
Aircond optional, music optional, window blind optional, air bags ..
Tony, When are you going to deliver back the monies that people paid you for the tickets for the flights you never flown?
what kind of different,
got stewardess eh?
Happy Ending Inside
Mr Tony, whatever you do dont forget to pay whatever you owe an airport company for their service to your aircraft fleet. I dont want pisang berbuah dua kali when u owe a service center or workshop for servicing your vehicle fleet again this time around.
Later u merajuk and threaten to move your ride-hailing hq to a neighbouring country. Make sure you pay for the movers to moved your car to that country eh.
Aircond is chargeable, music is chargeable.
Seat is wooden bench, cushion seat is charged separately.
Dear Mr. Paul Tan, Budget Airlines using Executive vehicles?
I have a Toyota Innova and wonder if I qualify to apply for e-hailing.
On another note, I did not receive last year’s cash handout from GRAB and neither this year. I am a part time driver aged 66 this year and drive whenever I can to earn a living.I was originally from since 2016 before GRAB take over. Please re-look your figures of 99.80 % because there a lot of part time elder drivers like me who have not received the benefit from the government. Care to check this out ?
Did you register as full time with Grab? As I understand only full timers qualify to get aid altho you can check with Grab for your case. Good luck
“We know delivery. We got this. ”
haha…there will be surcharge to bring your luggage, extra surcharge if it’s too big or heavy, extra surcharge to sit beside your spouse/friend (i.e. select seats)…..
This dude was crying in public telling how suffering he is and he gotta lay off massive number of staff and not refund customers and not pay his suppliers, yet here he got money to get himself a fleet (read: A FLEET!) of Alphards & Vellfires for his new venture, unless some paid goon comes here to tell me he got a fleet of them at his garage and he is also forcing his pilots to donate their luxovans to start this new business. Yeah sure.
I think its because he saw how much money grab can get by listing in nyse. Grab considered more valuable than airasia. Can you imagine that.
He is the same guy who Kamcheng with Najib Bossku… both Jatuhh. Served them right!!
Instead of Allfart and Hellfire, why not using Berukdua Alzaik and Mivee as it’s cheaper maintenance, save fuel, terrificly fast, also very spacious as well. Anyway, the similarities between these 2 Berukdua models is it were driven by a racing stunt wannabe drivers, that’s why the insurance extra coverage for Nirwana for both drivers and passengers just cost few pennies extra.