Your Cheatsheet to BlueSG : Electric Car Sharing System In SIngapore

So when the BlueSG launched their car sharing experience in Singapore, we happily took up the 1 year free membership and has been using it on and off. Now that the one year has ended, we decided to do up this blog post for you... an ALL-YOU-NEED-TO-KNOW-ABOUT-BLUESG.

photo grabbed from Bluesg website

How does it work?

1. An account is created, which automatically includes an AUTO-RENEWAL membership program that does not offer you any prompts.

2. You book your desired car and parking lot from the BlueSG app OR website.

3. You have 30 minutes to walk to the reserved car. If not, a penalty of $5 would be charged.

4. Tap into your car, which indicates it is reserved by its blue light.

5. Get in the car and drive.

6. You have 45 minutes to get to your reserved parking lot upon reservation. If not, your lot will be gone.

They have a 24 hours helpdesk assistance which you can connect with either by mobile phone / the phone installed inside every BlueSG car. Do note that sometimes it can take a long while before they pick up your call.

BlueSG membership

BlueSG offers a membership plan to potential drivers. This membership works like a handphone subscription plan. So once you signed up for the 1 year premium membership, you basically commit to pay $15 x 12 months = $180.

To get the membership or not?

So what are the perks in signing up for their membership? 

Just one. Cheaper rental fee, on a per minute basis. No additional perks.

As such, after doing some Math, we come to these figures.

Therefore, THE ONLY WAY TO BENEFIT FROM THE ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP is if you drive more than 1059 minutes per year OR drive a minimum of 89 minutes per month for 12 months to benefit from this.

So far from our experiences with BlueSG car, we had been driving station to station. For you to have a guage, each ride is about 20 mins to 40 mins, depending on the distance and the traffic.

Advantages of BlueSG

Good car size

• The small and compact size of a blue car makes driving and parking relatively easy in Singapore. Think of all the narrow carparks and parking lots. The space inside the car is also comfortable enough for 4 adults. 

Environmentally friendly car

• Electric cars like these reduce the consumption of petrol, which is equivalent to lesser output of greenhouse gases. 

Convenient and easy to book and return

• With everything all conveniently accessible via a mobile app, it is indeed easy to track the availability of the cars and parking lots. At least we don't have to face disappointment if we were to travel all the way to a blue car station only to realise there are no more cars.
• The search function allows us to just key in our postal code and we would be able to track the nearest blue car station.
• The Express function is helpful for users who just need a quick ride to run some errands. It allows you to book a car and the same parking lot whereby the car was parked at the same time. Do note that the booking time for the car is still 30 minutes from time of booking and parking lot is still 45 minutes from time of booking.
• The Queue-Pop function is a newly added function that allows you to be on the waiting list of an empty car/parking lot. If your desired car/parking lot were to be released, you would receive a notification that you have successfully "chope" that.

• Once a ride is complete, you would be able to see the ride details under the tab "My Rentals".

Potential issues with BlueSG

Cost may be lower but it may be higher too.

• One good thing about BlueSG is that there is no surge in costs even during peak hours and there is no costs for petrol since its an electric car. Parking fee is also not required if you are driving from station to station.
• When you opt to drive the car to your desired spot with no Blue car station, then you will be required to pay for the additional parking, on top of your rental.
• As the rental is based on a per minute charging, the costs of driving through the morning / evening peak period jam does not make economical sense. Imagine getting stuck in a jam for 1 hour, even with the membership rate, you would need to pay $20 for that hour. This is equivalent to you taking a taxi and the meter continues to run while u are stuck in the jam. On top of that you still need to pay ERP and be alert because you are the one driving. (At least if you are on a taxi, you can nap while the taxi driver does his job) I would rather look at other transport options.

Availability of the cars and parking lots

• We do see some patterns in the car movements after a while. During weekdays morning, most of the stations from the neighbourhood would be empty while the CBD and town stations would be filled. During weekend evenings, the stations from CBD and town stations would be largely empty and most of the stations at neighbourhood area would be filled. 
• Most of the times, during popular times, when we wanted to tap on BlueSG services to get to our desired places, we realised we could not fully depend on it. There are too little available cars or parking lots at each station (maximum of 4 per station).

Technical issues with the car

• I think this is expected since this is an electronic car. In our case, we have experienced quite a few technical issues in our 1 year experience. 
• Here are some examples:
• We were unable to lock the car although we had clearly locked it using the tap car. We even called the BlueSG staff to inform them that the car lock is spoilt. However, I ended up getting a warning to say that I did not lock the car and I would be charged $50 if there is a second time. 
• The paid parking system in the car did not work and we could not exit the carpark without a cashcard. We were stuck at the gantry with a whole string of cars (and impatient drivers horning) behind us.
• We tried to return the car but the return station was spoilt.
• There was also a time whereby we tried to return the car but our reserved lot was being occupied by another BlueSG car user.

Inconvenience with car sharing

• Humans being humans, we make mistakes too. Since we require insertion of cashcards to pay for carpark and ERP fees etc, we may accidentally leave our cashcards inside the car. There goes our money. Or sometimes we forgot to bring our cashcards so we had to do a last minute purchase.
• There were times when there are people who went to park at our reserved parking lots. That's one of the most irritating thing that had happened to us. We ended up incurring a higher rental fee because the timer continues to tick while we are frantically callling the 24/7 helpdesk and waiting for someone to pick up our call. Not forgetting the additional time to listen to us narrate our situation.
• The car may smell of food, especially if the previous user used it to dapao super fragrant food..... like durians.

Not appealing to less tech saavy drivers

• The convenience of an all-in app to manage with the bookings would also spells big challenge for less tech-saavy drivers. The registration itself requires forms to be filled online, together with submissions of driving license documentation. This is same for tracking and booking of the car. Therefore, the risk of incurring costs from "clicking the wrong buttons" may defer these drivers from tapping on the service.

Not child / toddler friendly

• As parents now, we are also concerned about the car safety for our infant. When BabyOOPS was younger, we could use a portable infant car seat that could be attached to our stroller. However now that he has outgrown that, it is difficult for us to lug the bulky and heavy car seat around just for the car.
• As BlueSG is not a public transport, do note that Singapore's Road Traffic Rules states that anyone below 1.35m is required to be secured with an age appropriate child restraint safety seat. It is a penalty for failing to comply. 
• Putting the law aside, we would want our children to be safe. A simple emergency brake may seemed ok for adults but our kid may get injured from impact on head /neck /spine if they knock against the car when we are holding them. He is also starting to get more and more mobile. It is difficult for us to carry him in the car because he will attempt to stand up and walk around in the car. Therefore, car-seat safety is one big consideration for us.

What we hope could be improved:

• A grace period of 5 minutes for checking of car conditions and familiarization of the car is helpful. We practically don spend much time doing such checks because the rental fee starts charging the moment you unlock the car door.
• In the inital month, we do see fluorescent warning triangle available at the boot. This is important and basic car safety equipment in the event of an accident/car breakdown. However, in our future drives, none of the cars have that.
• Create incentives or additional perks such as priority booking of car or parking lots, free rental time etc. If not, the membership will not be worthy of its value if you do not drive BlueSG cars frequently.
• Instead of an auto-renewal scheme, allow users to decide if they want to continue with the subscription after it expired. Even handphone subscriptions allow users to have such an option. Sadly, failing to notice the auto renewal date, both Mr OOPS and myself ended up paying the penalty fee when we chose not to extend the renewal of the membership. But I guess, paying the penalty fee is still more worth it than holding on to a membership which we hardly get to tap on.

Afterthoughts:

We definitely see more potential in this car sharing system in Singapore now that there are more stations and cars to accommodate to the increasing users. On and off, we have received notifications about new stations being set up all around Singapore. From just 80 available stations in 2017, it now has more than 100 stations.

While this electric car sharing service had been helpful to some extent, we come to a conclusion that this service should be viewed upon as just another form of public transport option. The reason is simple. It is not a reliable option whereby we can pre-book it and access it whenever we want to unlike other car rental options. There would be times whereby we planned to use the car to travel to a desired station but these plans had to be aborted when we cannot find a car/parking lot. It's almost like we are playing a waiting game based on fastest fingers.  Imagine us staring at our phones, waiting for a red slot to become green. Literally doing 守株待兔. The stress is overwhelming.

We also tried to book a car without booking a parking lot because there were no available lots. We thought that there would eventually be one parking lot by the time we reached our destination. Sadly, that was a bad decision. With no parking lots, we ended up loitering around the neighbourhood, clocking up unnecessary rental time, and still not having one. The nearest parking lot is at the next neighbourhood so we ended up parking there and then travelled back via a cab. FML.

Last note: We cancelled BlueSG membership. We may still use it on and off but this membership thingy is definitely not for us.

Cheers,

Mrs OOPS


Note: Follow @mrandmrsoops for more instant updates. This post is not sponsored or affiliated. It is based solely on our personal experiences with this car rental service for the past 1 year.