Drivelah, the Airbnb for Cars

Over the long weekend, I unlocked a new side hustle, which felt like an achievement, so I wanted to share it with you all. As we all know, car ownership in Singapore is crazy expensive, and we all do what we can to help alleviate the cost of car ownership. Some people drive grab hitch to offset petrol costs, but now, you can help to offset some of that costs by renting your car out, by the hour or day.

What is Drivelah?

Drivelah is a car sharing platform that connects car owners with car seekers, allowing car owners to earn additional incomes for the times when your car is idle.

For the most part, as a car owner, I only use it to send and pick my kids up from school, and then drive to work. Most of the day, it is just sitting there at the carpark.

That’s one huge depreciating chunk of metal right there.

How does Drivelah work?

Here’s a short, official video from Drivelah, on how their platform works.

At a platform level, drivelah works with Tokio Marine to insure every ride, so that your personal insurance and NCD will not be impacted should anything happen. This is really important as it gives both renters and owners peace of mind when using the platform.

My experience with Drivelah

Since Covid struck, usage of my car has dropped even more, especially since I am currently still job hunting. I thought why not give it a try and list my car just to see if there’s demand.

Based on the earnings potential listed for my car model, I can expect to generate $880 per month! Let’s do this!

I proceeded with the listing process, taking some photos of the car, and other details like my license and particulars. I priced my rental at $90 per day. Sure enough, I got a request on my dashboard to share my car on Friday, 31 July, for a day. Business is open.

Requests will come in through the dashboard. The dashboard is also where all the communications with the renter takes place, including details of the pick up etc. Each time there was an update, I will also get an sms notice to check and respond via the dashboard.

My first request

I actually had a couple requests that I had to reject, because I had to use the car. But I accepted the request for 31 Jul, and proceeded to chat with the renter on the pick up time and address.

The overall process was easy and smooth. On the day itself, the renter arrived, and we took photos of the car to upload onto the platform before the handover. I verified the pickup, showed him certain intricacies on the handling of the car, and off he went.

The car was returned 30 minutes before time the next day, and we followed the same process of uploading photos of the condition of the car, and verified the car dropoff.

I also promptly received an email on the payout details once I confirmed the dropoff of the car.

Awesome.

Lingering worries

Even though I knew I was well covered by the insurance, and renters were vetted on the platform, I did still worry from time to time over the course of the day on how my car was being treated.

Another worry I had was that this is a hugely worrying time of pandemic, and I was letting a stranger use my car for a day. I’m sure you know where I’m going with this, just from a risk management perspective.

I think if my car was an older car, and this was a different time, I would be a lot more at ease with the concept of car sharing.

Drive Lah Referral

If you have a car just sitting idle, and you’re open to sharing, or if you may need a car for weekend errands from time to time, you can try our Drive Lah. If you sign up with the above link, you’ll receive a $30 credit, no matter if you’re renting a car, or sharing a car.