In recent years, the mobility market has ushered in a boom, and the rise of online car-hailing has quietly changed the way people travel. However, looking at the recent development of online car-hailing, the industry has been going through ups and downs, and the online car-hailing industry is constantly exploring and standardizing itself. At present, with the accelerated rise of the new ecology represented by the aggregation model, industry insiders point out that "cooperation" may become a new direction for the future development of the online car-hailing industry.
The "second half" of the ride-hailing industry is coming.
From the popularization of mobile Internet and smart phones to the rapid development of new energy vehicles, multiple factors have boosted the explosive growth of the online car-hailing market in recent years. According to a report released by Zhiyan Consulting, the global ride-hailing market has shown a rapid growth trend in the past few years, and competition in the industry has intensified. In 2022, the market size of China's online car-hailing industry will be about 256.2 billion yuan, while this figure was less than 50 billion yuan in 2015, with a compound growth rate of 31 from 2015 to 202279%。
In the period of "savage growth", various online car-hailing platform companies fought a "first-class war" to attract traffic in order to seize the market, and unfair competition frequently appeared, disrupting the travel service market. However, the consequences of low-price competition have left both drivers and passengers lose, with ride-hailing drivers' incomes plummeting and services downgrading. At the same time, lax checks have led to a further increase in the number of non-compliant ride-hailing services.
According to the Ministry of Transport, according to the statistics of the online car-hailing regulatory information interaction system, as of October 31, a total of 334 online car-hailing platform companies across the country have obtained online car-hailing platform business licenses, and a total of 633 online car-hailing driver licenses have been issued in various places40,000 copies, 270 vehicle transport certificates60,000 copies, and the online car-hailing regulatory information interaction system received a total of 8 orders in October0.9 billion orders.
However, the number of active drivers (including ride-hailing) announced by some platforms has reached 19 million, and with the influx of more drivers, market competition continues to intensify, and the contradiction between supply and demand in the online car-hailing market has begun to appear. Since the beginning of this year, Dongguan, Jinan, Wenzhou, Sanya, Changsha, Linyi and other places have issued online car-hailing saturation warnings, and some places have even suspended the acceptance of new online car-hailing transportation business.
Han Biao, director of the China Institute of Transportation Economics of Shenzhen University, said recently that in the past year, conflicts and disputes caused by the contradiction between drivers and passengers have occurred frequently, and the service quality of online car-hailing as a personalized travel has deteriorated, which needs to be paid close attention to.
Standing at a new node in the development of the online car-hailing industry, people are gradually realizing that "burning money for scale" is becoming a thing of the past, and the online car-hailing market has bid farewell to the incremental economy of scale expansion, and has entered the elimination stage of the stock market.
Open and win-win, from "competing for traffic" to "fighting for service".
Tracing the footprints of the online car-hailing industry along the way, it is not difficult to find that since 2016, China has officially introduced corresponding management measures to promote the legalization of online car-hailing. In recent years, ** has launched a series of measures to guide the healthy development of the online car-hailing market.
In September 2021, the Department of Transportation Services of the Ministry of Transport issued the Notice on Maintaining the Order of Fair Competition and Accelerating the Compliance of Online Ride-hailing, which pointed out that operating in accordance with laws and regulations is a prerequisite for ensuring the safety of online ride-hailing operations, and is a basic requirement for protecting the legitimate rights and interests of drivers and passengers and maintaining a fair competition market environment.
In February 2022, the General Office of the Ministry of Transport issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Joint Supervision of the Whole Chain of the Online Taxi Booking Industry", pointing out that it will strengthen the supervision of the whole chain of the online car-hailing industry before, during, and after the event, and promote the standardized, healthy and sustainable development of the online car-hailing industry.
In April this year, the "Notice on Printing and Distributing the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Modernization of Market Supervision" proposed to improve the regulatory rules and standards for new forms of transportation such as online car-hailing, bicycle sharing, car time-sharing leasing, and online freight. Guide platform enterprises to improve their service levels and attract more operators to operate and start businesses online.
It is not difficult to find that the compliance process of the online car-hailing market is accelerating, the mechanism for protecting the rights and interests of passengers will be gradually improved, and standardization and integration will become the development trend. Industry insiders also pointed out that the focus of competition in the online car-hailing market has changed to an operating model oriented by safety, compliance and high-quality experience. Online car-hailing companies must base themselves on the essence of industry services, strengthen compliance construction, and continuously improve service quality, so as to seize and form core competitiveness and achieve steady and far-reaching results in the strong winds and waves of the market.
Looking at the current online car-hailing market, the accelerated rise of aggregation platforms represented by AutoNavi and Meituan is changing the ecology of the online car-hailing industry. From "competing for traffic" to "fighting for service", the aggregation model is helping the industry return to the essence of service.
The emergence of online car-hailing aggregation platforms has promoted competition in the online car-hailing market, promoted the improvement of the structure of the online car-hailing market, and provided more choices for small and medium-sized platforms. Gu Dasong, executive director of the Traffic Rule of Law and Development Research Center of Southeast University and president of the online car-hailing branch of the China Urban Public Transport Association, said.
It is understood that the aggregation platform provides information intermediary and transaction matching services for online car-hailing operators and passengers, which alleviates the problem of passengers' difficulty in taking a taxi on the one hand, and alleviates the problem of difficulty in obtaining customers on the other handRide-hailing platforms focus on business operations and vehicle and driver management. The refinement of the industrial division of labor and the formation of an aggregation ecology enable online ride-hailing platforms to build their own platforms at a low cost, alleviate traffic problems, and further focus on service and capacity construction.
In other words, bidding farewell to the mentality of "grabbing the market" and "building opponents", "openness and win-win" has become the core keyword of the aggregation model, and its emergence makes traffic no longer a luxury. "The aggregator platform opens up traffic to the industry, making it possible to change the industry pattern, the customer acquisition cost of the online car-hailing platform has dropped by 90%, the platform can obtain traffic with services, and the industry has begun to return to the essence of service. Li Xinhua, general manager of AutoNavi Taxi, said.
Taking Fengyun Travel as an example, according to Du Lingfang, chairman of the board, since it was connected to the AutoNavi taxi aggregation platform in 2019, the order volume of Fengyun Travel has increased by 5 times in the past two years, and as of this year, it has driven nearly 120,000 jobs, and has been selected as a specialized and new "little giant" enterprise in Hubei Province. "With AutoNavi's traffic support, we can spare more energy to focus on the areas we are good at, deeply cultivate the region, strengthen standardized guidance, and improve service efficiency. Du Lingfang said.
Coincidentally, on November 30, the Hangzhou Municipal Transportation Bureau released the online car-hailing service quality evaluation for the third quarter of 2023. 42 ride-hailing platforms are actually operating in Hangzhou. Among them, among the platforms with an average monthly order of more than 100,000, the three platforms with the best services are timely car, Cao Cao travel and journey car-hailing. Among the platforms with monthly orders of less than 100,000 yuan, the three platforms with the best services are Huli Limousine, Zhongche Travel and 365 car-hailing. The service quality of regional platforms has surpassed that of national leading platforms.
Yin Hao, Secretary-General of the Online Ride-hailing Branch of the China Urban Public Transport Association, also said that through the blessing of the aggregation platform, China's online ride-hailing industry may have more innovation capabilities in the post-epidemic era, and personalized, professional and refined services featuring local platforms may become an industry trend.
The aggregation model drives the joint growth of the upstream and downstream industrial chains.
While solving the traffic problem and promoting the industry to better focus on service construction, the aggregation model with openness and win-win as the core concept is also driving the joint growth of the upstream and downstream industry chain of online car-hailing.
Chongqing's local enterprises are typical cases. Under the aggregation mode, Zhaozhao Travel can cooperate with automobile companies on the basis of technology and traffic, and improve the ground service capabilities of Zhaozhao Travel to drivers and vehicles with the support of Dongfeng Fengguang Blue Electric New Energy Products and Dongfeng Fengguang's ground sales network all over the country.
In the next three years, Zhaozhao Travel is developing nationwide, and it is expected to jointly invest 50,000 new energy vehicles into the shared travel market with Dongfeng Wind and Solar Blue Electric New Energy, which is behind the livelihood of 50,000 drivers connecting 50,000 families, in addition to automobile manufacturing, sales, after-sales and other links, driving the employment of the entire travel industry chain. Chen Mingchun, general manager of Zhaozhao Travel, said a few days ago that in the future, Zhaozhao Travel is also expected to feed back the R&D and design of automobiles through vehicle operation data.
In Shandong, the driving effect of the aggregation model on the travel industry chain has also gradually emerged, boosting the industry to transform from a competitive logic to a symbiotic and win-win logic, opening up a new space for industrial upgrading and the development of all parties.
In order to meet the growing demand for travel, Timely Car purchased 20,000 new energy vehicles from Shandong Guojin Automobile in 2022, and successively invested in the online car-hailing business to cultivate full-time transportation capacity. Hou Gang, general manager of timely car-hailing, said that the capacity demand of an online car-hailing platform for timely use of cars accounts for 20% of the annual sales of Guojin Automobile, and behind the investment of 20,000 new energy vehicles, there are nearly 1,000 automobile industry chain enterprises, which jointly create nearly 5 billion output value.
Looking forward to the future of the development of the ride-hailing industry, the aggregation ecosystem not only makes travel more efficient and convenient, but also creates a broader market space. From "making opponents" to "making friends", from "competing for traffic" to "fighting for service", ......In the online car-hailing market, which has entered the "second half" competition, the concept of "cooperation" is bringing new opportunities for future development with multi-party participation and win-win results, or it will be a new answer to promote the stable and far-reaching development of the online car-hailing industry. (Reporter Wang Lu, Li Yuyou).
Editor: Wei Wei.