S’poreans Can Now Rent Out Their Cars With ‘Drive Lah’, The New Airbnb For Cars

Have a car, and looking to get some of that extra green green bling bling (money, I’m talking about money) on the side?

You might no longer have to resort to Grab driving in order to get that extra cash.

In fact, just let your car do the work!

But no, I’m not talking about driverless car. I’m talking about something much more simpler: renting your car out like AirBnB.

It’s just right about damn time someone came up with a system for that.

‘Drive Lah’, Car Sharing Community

‘Drive Lah’, basically the Airbnb for cars, is founded by Dutch entrepreneur Dirk-Jan ter Horst, 37.

Just in case you’re somehow swakoo enough to not know what Airbnb is: it’s a platform for individuals, like you and me, to put their cars up for listing. Renters can then rent the car.

And because it’s your car, you get to decide the daily rental rates or specific rules like driving to Malaysia or if pets are allowed.

Of course, if you only want to use it to rent cars, that’s also fine too. In fact, it’s still a win-win situation for car renters and owners since the promise is that rentals will be 30 to 40% cheaper than traditional rental companies.

Renters pay the daily rental price decided by car owners plus a 20% fee by Drive Lah for insurance and operational costs.

Only daily rentals are available no, though they might roll out hourly rentals later.

Here’s the other boring stuff that car owners need to do:

• Screening by Drive Lah’s team
• Submit NRIC and car details electronically
• Ensure vehicles are properly insured

And renters:

• Submit NRIC + driver’s license
• Drive Lah to hold a S$500 refundable security deposit on their credit card for bookings

If you somehow are interested in all the boring shit already, you can straight up go to their policy pages here.

So, How Does Each Rental Work?

First, register on the Drivelah website. Then you can make bookings on the website. The app is planned for next year.

Renters can search for cars within 100m of their location, or filter and search according to models or price.

Although rental prices are decided by owners, there are currently rentals as cheap as S$50/day.

Then, renters can contact the car owner directly to arrange for pick up.

Now that the renter has the car, they have to take pictures to be checked by the car owners before and after the booking. This is for checking the condition of the cars, like scratches or dents, in case of disputes.

But hold on, don’t get too excited yet. There might still be some time before this becomes a super common thing.

Currently Still Under Trial By LTA

Drive Lah is actually still on a year-long trial that started 1 Oct 2019, which was granted approval by LTA.

Since it’s a trial, the number of cars is currently capped at 500, though they already have 400 cars on the platform at the moment.

And you might remember that LTA’s current private car rental scheme only allows private cars (not those PHV cars but cars by real owners) to be rented out on weekends and public holidays.

But Drive Lah has gotten LTA’s permission to operate on all days.

Whether it actually works out we still have to see, but that’s one more thing for us to look forward to in the future.