As we all know, since 20 17, the time-sharing car market has entered a shrinking rhythm, which we also demonstrated in the previous column "Seeing is believing". At the same time, in addition to the Zhengzhou incident, we can also see many "shared car cemeteries" appearing on the Internet from time to time. Therefore, this also reminds us that in the "unsettled" 2020, after the "low tide" of the shared car market, where did the shared car and the time-sharing rental platform go? What's the living condition? Don't worry, we'll tell you the truth with nearly 1 month survey!
Seeing is believing is a field visit program created by car home News Industry Channel. We hope to penetrate the limitations of hearsay with our feet and eyes, make the corporate image and news events more stereoscopic, and contribute some valuable reference information to the development of the automobile industry.
Quickly understand the key points of this article:? 1. Zhengzhou "one-step car use" incident does exist, but the site has been cleaned up; ? 2. There are still survivors after the "cold winter" of sharing cars, but their living styles are different; ? There were more than 370 "shared car companies" registered in March 2018, and now only less than one third; ? 4. In the final analysis, sharing a car is still "relying on a big tree to enjoy the cool".
■? Fact reduction: Where did the low-tide shared car go? ? Zhengzhou: What was the scene like?
At present, the time-sharing car market is gradually shrinking, and those abandoned shared cars in Zhengzhou, Henan Province have become a good example, as mentioned at the beginning of the article. To this end, the editors also personally went to the events circulating on the Internet. What's the situation at the scene? We are also curious.
According to the tips in the news report, we soon came to the relevant incident site-Shenzhuang Road, Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Before we arrived, we expected to see the same scene as in the video, but when we arrived at the scene, we found that the abandoned shared car in the video had been cleaned up, leaving only a large number of damaged parts on the ground, including headlights, body coverings, glass and so on. Although it has been cleaned up, this scene still looks quite messy.
Subsequently, we learned through inquiry that "One-step Car" is a new energy car rental service platform for the travel market in second, third and fourth tier cities. The company bought electric cars from the main engine factory and established a time-sharing platform, allowing users to complete the process of renting and returning cars with the help of App. At the same time, they solve the problem of charging and parking vehicles by self-built or cooperative operation of charging piles and pick-up outlets. One-Step Bus started to operate in June of 2011July, and in June of 201July, it obtained Series A financing of 654.38+35 million RMB. The investor comes from Polyfluoride, which is also the investor of Zhi Dou Auto.
However, since August of 20 17, the investment direction of polyfluoride group has changed, which makes the business situation of Yiqi car begin to decline. By the end of 20 17, the company's capital chain continued to be tense, and in order to maintain its operation, it began to misappropriate customer deposits. Combined with the previous conclusion of "Seeing is believing" column, it is also the "cold winter" of time-sharing cars. With the decline of subsidies for 20 18 electric vehicles, various factors have brought the late one-stop car to a deadlock. In the end, on 20 19 and 1 month, Yitianche was sentenced by the court to owe a lot of debts, and the assets/bank accounts of legal persons Shang Xiaofeng and Sihai were all frozen.
Beijing/Tongzhou/Langfang: Survivors in "Timesharing Winter"
In fact, in addition to the one-stop car mentioned above, there are many shared car brands that rose at that time, and gradually withdrew from people's sight in the shrinking market environment, which we will talk about in detail later. However, the good news is that after the "reshuffle" of the market, the business model of bicycle sharing has gradually returned to a stable state. So, what about the survivors of the "market winter"?
First of all, due to the recent epidemic, we can't go out to other provinces and cities to investigate, so we will focus on Beijing and its surrounding cities and counties. The route is roughly "Beijing Center-Tongzhou-Langfang", and the model of "City Center-Suburb-Surrounding Counties and Cities" can cover more environments and scenes.
But to be honest, there are very few time-sharing vehicles that can be seen in Beijing today. When the shared car market was booming a few years ago, we often saw the BMW 1 sedan version, MINI and smart owned by TOGO Tuge on the street. Cars such as fortwo, including shared cars of other brands, have become hard to find, and those that can be seen occasionally on the street look rather shabby. Of course, the reasons for this phenomenon are not single. In addition to the shrinking market itself, the shortage of parking spaces and high parking fees in Beijing have also made the daily use and operation of shared cars difficult. Maybe shared cars are not suitable for crowded big city centers?
When I came to Tongzhou, the situation here was much better than that in Beijing. We can already see more shared cars here, most of which come from GoFun and Mo Fan. The main parking spots of these shared cars are near the subway station, which is easy to find by using the App. This model is also conducive to solving the last few kilometers of the "company in the city/living in the suburbs" crowd, so there are more opportunities for sharing cars to be used here.
From this point of view, the "GoFun" and "Mo Fan Travel" we have observed at present can be regarded as shared car brands with good activity in Beijing, and according to the inquiry, "GoFun" is a time-sharing rental platform backed by FAW, and its CEO Wei Dong is also the CEO of FAW Car Rental and Chief Operating Officer; FAW rented a car. Similarly, Mo Fan Tourism is also a wholly-owned subsidiary of BAIC Group Co., Ltd. It can be seen that compared with the aforementioned "one-step car", these time-sharing platforms supported by large state-owned enterprises/central enterprises have survived the "severe winter" of the shared car market.
After coming to Langfang from Tongzhou, it seems that the shared cars here have got rid of the congestion and license plate restrictions in Beijing, and the living space is even bigger. There are many parking lots in the surrounding counties and cities that provide borrowed/returned cars, so there are more shared cars here. In addition to the trip to Mo Fan we saw before, there is also a shared car brand called "Linkage Cloud", and its model is mainly Qoros. According to the inquiry, Li Anyun is a car rental service company in Shenzhen. Besides time-sharing itself, it also provides car rental, second-hand car trading, car financial services and other services. At the same time, this company also has deep cooperation with Baoneng, which is the major shareholder of Qoros. On June 20 19, Linked Cloud and Baoneng reached a cooperation to purchase a large number of Qoros vehicles as operating vehicles, and Baoneng Automobile also undertook the leasing and sales business of Linked Cloud. It can be seen that in addition to relying entirely on large enterprises, their own transformation and business expansion also play a key role in the survival of these shared car companies.
Jiaxing, Zhejiang: the legendary "shared car cemetery"
In addition to the above-mentioned shared car companies, we also saw the shared car "cemetery" in the picture through the Internet. A large number of abandoned shared electric vehicles are arranged on the open space, and the scene is much more spectacular than that in Zhengzhou. Through reports, we know that this shared car cemetery appeared in Wanmin Village, Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, but due to the epidemic situation, we can't go directly to the scene, which is a pity. However, it is conceivable that this "shared car cemetery" in Wanxin Village of Jiaxing seems to have a similar nature to Zhengzhou, or it can be said that there are problems in the operation of Zhengzhou's enlarged version of the time-sharing rental brand, resulting in a large number of shared electric vehicles being abandoned here. The high operating costs caused by subsidies for electric vehicles make it impossible for these vehicles to be put into normal use in a short time.
Through the above phenomenon, we can easily find that the contraction of the shared car market since 20 17 has brought great changes to this industry. As the saying goes, a few happy families are sad, so what caused this phenomenon? What is the current living condition of the shared car company? Don't worry, you keep looking down.
■? Market Analysis: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of Shared Cars? After the market storm, how many families have mixed feelings?
The trend of "new four modernizations" has brought many possibilities to the sharing industry. Under the favor of policy blessing and capital players, sharing cars once became a new outlet for "sucking gold". Through public information inquiry, we know that from 20 14 to now, billions of funds have been injected into the shared car market. Among them, not only the capital outside the circle, but also the traditional car companies have made a "shared" layout based on their own pre-judgment of the market. According to the data, in 20 18, there have been 370 registered companies of "shared cars", and there are not a few successors.
But in fact, the market situation of 20 18 is not optimistic. The end of the era of positive growth has increased the uncertainty of the development of the automobile industry. In the test brought by the new round of reform, sharing cars is also doomed. Affected by the big environment, more and more shared car companies have no choice but to go bankrupt because of the profitability and operation problems of the platform, and there are only more than 100 operating companies that really own the fleet.
strategic investment
one round
not published
2140,000
Popular capital
Volkswagen Capital/Chery Automobile
B+ wheel
"The data comes from the Internet, and the statistical time is as of June 5438 +2020 10."
To be exact, the "elimination system" of car sharing actually started at 20 17. That year, some cars, EZZY and Muggle tours announced their withdrawal. TOGO Tuge, which has always been favored by consumers, also withdrew from the market on 20 19. Now, TOGO Tuge App has stopped running. Wang Lifeng, founder and CEO of Tuge Travel, was blocked by Tuge users near Shilibao, Beijing. App? Shops and other software malls are off the shelves.
"Baidu TOGO Tuge Post Bar"
Even if the accumulated financing amount exceeds 500 million yuan, even if it is larger than other small-scale companies, it is difficult to be immune. The collapse of TOGO is not a case, but the problem behind it is common to all shared car platforms. Although it can be seen from the above table that many enterprises are still operating normally, due to the "cooling-off period" of capital, what these enterprises can do is to survive, instead of the previous "crazy investment" situation.
In the process of wave after wave of enterprise collapse, people feel more and more deeply that it is not easy for those start-ups that focus on assets and operations to survive in the shared car market.
In fact, in the final analysis, the business operation model is flawed. Take a closer look, the terminal price of each car purchased by the shared car platform is at least 10,000 yuan. If you want to improve the software style and attract more consumers at all levels, you have to buy hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of models. However, these upfront input costs are always a hole that cannot be filled. After all, operators adopt the strategy of high fees and want to fill the pit quickly, but consumers don't buy it. The low-cost strategy makes it difficult for operators to recover their costs quickly, not to mention the ultimate profit target. For these companies, it is always necessary to solve the contradiction between supply and demand, "burning money" and "buying".
In addition, the high cost brought by the user experience makes the shared car platform overwhelmed. In order to occupy the market share by satisfying the user experience, the shared car platform began to increase the car return area at no cost to meet the needs of consumers. Obviously, such investment will directly bring the operating cost of personnel, plus the daily maintenance of vehicles, accident maintenance, service management fees of parking outlets and so on. These high costs will test the operational ability of operators and even the entire shared car system, as well as the patience and strength of capital.
Can a shared car really only rely on a big tree to enjoy the cool?
According to our field visits in Beijing and surrounding cities, those newly launched shared car platforms have "disappeared" in the market, and most of them are still operated by traditional car companies. In a sense, compared with pure commercial operators, car companies are more comfortable in controlling the richness and cost of vehicles, and car sharing projects are not the only source of their profits, which is the advantage of car companies.
Backed by huge automobile enterprises, it can be clearly seen that the "backstage" shared automobile platform has grown into an industry leader. Judging from the public information on the Internet, the currently active shared car apps include GoFun, EVCARD, Panda Car, and Light Travel. These are inextricably linked with car companies. Among them, our common EVCARD, Light Travel and Panda are time-sharing leasing companies of SAIC, BAIC Group and Lifan Automobile respectively.
Of course, for car companies, getting involved in sharing cars is also a homeopathic move in the market. Since 20 18, the growth rate of automobile sales in China has been slowing down and continues the negative growth trend. According to the data of 20 19, the automobile sales reached 25.769 million, down 8.2% year-on-year, which was far from the previous forecast of 30 million baseboards. In this context, car companies gradually realize that the transformation to service providers is the general trend.
"Thousands of new energy vehicles in an urban area of Hangzhou are in full swing"
Therefore, car companies can accumulate vehicle operation and user travel data through small-scale attempts on shared car projects. Through these data, they can better optimize the product design of new energy vehicles and prepare for future driverless driving. As Jiang Qi, technical director of Panda Auto, said in an interview with the media: "Car companies do time-sharing because they believe that in the future, users will inevitably switch from buying products to buying services."
Relying on big trees to enjoy the cool has been fully verified in the evolutionary history of the shared automobile industry. Today, most time-sharing platforms have "fallen down" without exception, because the capital chain is broken. In the cold wave of capital, faced with the problem of "difficult profit", it is difficult to get long-term capital injection. However, for a platform with a car enterprise background, this part of the trouble is saved.
"Delivery Ceremony of Chery New Energy and GoFun under the First Automobile Group"
On the other hand, some car companies will also choose to cooperate with time-sharing companies, such as Chery Automobile and GoFun. By choosing this mode, they can not only achieve their own goal of destocking, but also accumulate user data with the help of the operating platform, which increases their operating costs without their own personal operation, but also provide themselves with sample data for future transformation. Therefore, "win-win cooperation" has gradually become another development path for the shared automobile industry.
Full text summary:
Therefore, in general, from the "blowout" of shared cars earlier to the "dormancy" and "contraction" of the whole market later, the shuffled shared car market has brought about the polarization phenomenon we are seeing at present-on the one hand, the enterprises that failed to survive, the "beating" of capital and market made them black and blue, and those abandoned vehicles or "shared car cemeteries" silently witnessed all this; And those brands that have survived the "cold winter" of shared cars have their own survival skills. For example, in many examples mentioned above, it may be a good choice to "enjoy the cool with your back against a big tree", which is why we see that many shared car brands owned by large state-owned enterprises/central enterprises/automobile manufacturers have survived smoothly. At the same time, the contraction of the market has also transformed some time-sharing platforms into new models such as long-term leasing and rent-based purchasing. Therefore, although the time-sharing leasing market is still shrinking further, a new business model is being introduced. (Preliminary investigation/car home? Ma Aijun/Zhouyi/Chen Hao; Text/car home? Ma Aijun/Zhouyi)