Investment opportunities, challenges and impacts of the car sharing industry

Car sharing means that many people use one car together, that is, the driver has only right to use the vehicle without ownership. With the advent of the sharing economy, the rise of emerging consumer groups, and the concept of environmental protection, the concept of car sharing has become quite popular and has become a new trend in urban travel. The mobility of urban residents has been increasing, and the number of taxis has stagnated. The demand for travel has not been fully met. In addition, the restrictions on purchases have deepened the contradiction between supply and demand of urban vehicles. The concept of consumers has changed, and the future car sharing market will usher in. Great development opportunities.

The broad-based car sharing market includes long-term rental, short-term rental, special car, carpooling, time-sharing, and P2P leasing. Long-term and short-term rentals are traditional shared transportation modes, mainly provided by the aforementioned car operating leasing companies. Special vehicles, carpooling, time-sharing, and P2P leasing are emerging mobile modes that have emerged in recent years.

The establishment of the easy-to-use car in 2012 marked the beginning of the emerging mobile travel mode in the car sharing market in China. In 2012, the fast and the drop of the line went on the line, and then joined forces, marking the beginning of the development of the network car market; Uber entered China in 2014, and was merged with 2016, the network car market pattern was reshuffled . Challenges from traditional industries, user skepticism and policy uncertainty are always accompanied by the development of the entire online car market. In July 2016, the “Interim Measures for the Administration of Online Taxi Service Management” was issued, and “l(fā)egalization of the network car” was finally recognized. By the end of 2016, the number of online booking taxi users reached 225 million, accounting for 30.7% of netizens; the number of online booking car users was 168 million, accounting for 23.0% of netizens.

In addition to the network car, the car sharing ecology continues to emerge and develop other emerging formats. The frenzy of taxi applications has just passed, and P2P rental cars (personal-to-person private car direct rent mode) have sprung up in China in 2013. With the PP car rental in the Chinese market, one-step car, joint sharing, Tuokesi shared car rental, location car rental and other P2P car rental platform and Thread technology hardware strategic cooperation, the rapid landing of the timeshare model began to emerge in China come out. At present, P2P car rental companies rely mainly on financing to obtain funding sources to expand their business scope and acquire more users. Among them, the amount of PP car rental financing is relatively high. In September 2015, PP car rental received 500 million yuan of financing, which is the largest financing in the P2P car rental market. Driven by favorable policies, automakers, car networking companies, and Internet companies have taken advantage of this trend. Although mobile phone mobile payment and Internet O2O offline development mode is becoming more and more perfect, but from the perspective of private car owners, private car security, traffic safety, tenant integrity, etc., the P2P car rental market is still facing many development difficulties. The current market participants of P2P car rental are mainly entrepreneurial companies, which are still in the market cultivation period and have broad prospects in the future.

In the past two years, the market for time-of-use leasing (storage-to-use leasing services provided by cars in hours or days) with new energy vehicles as the main force has gradually warmed up, and various regions have actively deployed new energy-time leasing industries. At present, more than 20 cities in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Shenzhen have started time-share leasing of new energy vehicles. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 30 companies in the field of car time-sharing in China, of which more than 15 have been financed. After nearly two years of market testing, time-sharing still has the following problems: less parking spots, inconveniences in picking up cars and returning cars, most require deposits, product problems, long waiting time for user authentication, insurance and claims It is not clear, maintenance and operation costs are high, and the TBOX of the wiring generally has a burning car. The short circuit of the line and the safety of the electrical fault are large. Some of the problems can be solved by continuously optimizing the products and services, while the problem of less parking spots is affected by the city. The tight parking space of the parking space needs to be coordinated by the local government.

The booming car sharing market has had varying degrees of impact on the various players in the automotive industry chain. For traditional car manufacturers, car sharing increases the efficiency of vehicle use, which in turn will affect the sales of traditional cars to a certain extent. In response to the opportunities and challenges brought about by car sharing, traditional car manufacturers began to lay out the field of car sharing. In China, self-owned brands such as Geely, Jianghuai, Chery, Beiqi, Yujie, Zhengdao and other new energy vehicles have participated in car sharing through special vehicles or time-sharing. On the one hand, giving full play to its advantages in vehicle source, it can reduce the cost of vehicle use; it can also develop specific models for mobile travel platforms; in addition, it can promote its own brand with the help of mobile travel platforms.

For traditional taxi companies and leasing companies, the network car has seized some of its markets. On the other hand, in response to the impact of car sharing, more and more taxi companies have entered the network car market, and car rental companies have also transformed into the car market. In 2015, the “Shouqi Cars” APP was officially launched; in 2016, the “VW Travel” platform of the Volkswagen Jiatong Group was officially launched; the powerful car rental companies such as Shenzhou Car Rental, Yiyi Car Rental, etc. have set up their own car platforms; The relatively weak small and medium-sized leasing companies have realized business transformation through cooperation with the network car platform.

 The increasingly fierce competition in the car sharing market has also brought new market space for financial institutions. Auto financial institutions need to combine the new formats of car sharing to continuously innovate financial products to meet the financial needs of participants in the car sharing market. For example, financial leasing can be used to purchase cars in batches by the financial leasing companies. The car sharing platform pays rents on a monthly basis. On the one hand, it can reduce the pressure on cash flow, and on the other hand, it can rapidly expand the fleet size.