Robotaxi'S "Outpost": Where Will Online Car Hailing Go After Barbaric Growth?

As a big wave of automobile industry, "sharing" is profoundly changing the way Chinese people travel.

"Internet +" transportation is profoundly changing the way people travel. By the end of 2019, online car Hailing has covered more than 400 cities across the country, and the average daily usage of the platform has reached 20 million person times. " On December 22, 2020, the white paper "sustainable development of China's transportation" issued by the Information Office of the State Council pointed out.

At the same time, the battle of online car Hailing has never stopped. From traditional main engine plants to new forces of car making, from Internet giants to science and technology enterprises to energy companies, around the reform of travel industry, the industrial path of shared travel is also undergoing rounds of reshuffle in the wrestling and integration of participants.

On February 25, T3 travel, backed by FAW, Dongfeng and Chang'an, as well as Tencent and Ali, two Internet giants, disclosed the new strategic trend of the company: after entering 21 cities such as Shanghai, T3 travel will land in 27 cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen in 2021.

It is worth noting that in less than two years since its establishment, T3 travel expanded rapidly, with more than 40000 vehicles put into operation, more than 18 million registered users, more than 1 million orders on peak duty day, and 150 million safe trips for users. Questmobile data shows that the annual growth rate of its independent app downloads has reached 904%, and weekly active users have surpassed Cao Cao travel and Shouqi car hailing, ranking second in China's online car Hailing industry and No.1 in B2C travel field.

However, looking around the "players" of online car hailing in China, Didi still occupies the "monopoly" position. Before that, many players tried to challenge Didi, but it seems that there is still a big gap.

Therefore, in the whole online car Hailing industry, competition and shuffling are still the same theme.

As a big wave of automobile industry, "sharing" is profoundly changing the way Chinese people travel. Photo by Gan Jun

Online car Hailing Market

In fact, after the price war in the past few years, the pattern of "one super and many strong" in the travel market has basically been determined. But the future of the travel market remains unquestionable.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the market value of shared travel in the United States, Europe and China will reach 1.5 trillion US dollars (about 10036.8 billion yuan), with an average annual compound growth rate (2017-2030) of about 24%. Among them, the market value of shared travel in China will be 564 billion US dollars (about 3773.8 billion yuan), with an average annual growth rate of 32%.

Dong Yang, vice chairman of China electric vehicle 100 people's Association, also affirmed the development of shared travel. He said, "shared travel will not affect the development of the automobile industry. In the next 10-20 years, the number of cars will not be reduced due to the development of shared travel. China's car ownership still has double growth space."

It is worth noting that at the key node of the automobile industry turning into the stock game era, the reform in the field of travel is ready to go, and the main engine plants, travel platforms and technology companies rush to share the travel track, and the competition in China's travel service market is becoming more and more fierce.

"Online car Hailing has entered the second wave of industry development. The first wave of high tide is mainly to burn money war, Didi occupied most of the market share. However, the characteristics of the second round are that Didi's market share has been diluted and greatly decreased, and Internet giants such as meituan and Gaode, as well as new players such as host factories, have entered On March 1, Zhang Xiang, an auto industry analyst, pointed out in an interview with the 21st century economic reporter that didi has established its position in the online car Hailing market after the first wave of reshuffle. However, with the beginning of the second wave, many new opportunities have emerged in this market.

According to incomplete statistics, at present, more than 20 car companies have entered the online car Hailing market through direct and indirect ways.

According to the data of the Ministry of transport, more than 190 platform companies in the field of online car Hailing have obtained business licenses in various regions, more than 2.5 million drivers have obtained license services, and one million compliant vehicles have been put into the market, with daily average orders reaching 21 million, accounting for about 20% of the total taxi passenger volume; shared bicycles have been put into operation in 360 cities across the country, with an average daily riding volume of 45.7 million person times More than 200000 vehicles have been put into operation in the field of time-sharing leasing.

"At present, the market is relatively large and there are more players, but the industry will continue to shuffle before the market is fully mature and on the right track." Zhang Xiang further pointed out that "the so-called right track" is to achieve a profit model, rather than to burn money into the market. The online car Hailing market is experiencing the second wave of "savage growth". It is uncertain what the future pattern will be. "

Analysys analysis believes that in the next 1-2 years, the online car Hailing market will present a competitive pattern that "top enterprises such as didi will lead the whole country with platform mode, and B2C self run enterprises will focus on regional development".

Crossing the 20% life and death line

"The players in the middle and lower reaches will become more difficult to survive, and the pressure will be great." According to Cui Dayong, CEO of T3 travel, without 20% market share, it means that online car Hailing platform cannot survive.

Based on several years of market research and actual trading experience, Cui Dayong believes that car companies who want to join the Bureau's online car Hailing business should not try it easily without 20 billion yuan of capital reserve.

"Some platforms look alive, but they're dead." On February 25, Cui Dayong, in an interview with the 21st century economic report reporter, said, "every time you enter a city, T3 travel hopes to get through the service through large-scale investment in operating vehicles. The goal is to capture more than 20% of the market share in all the cities it operates, so as to achieve true standardization. With about 20% of the market share, (passengers) can get the same car experience as the head enterprises. "

In the T3 travel target, the market share of each city is more than 20%. Data shows that in cities that have been online for more than a year, Wuhan, Changchun and other cities have accounted for more than 20%, and Nanjing has accounted for more than 16%.

The goal of "20% market share" means that T3 travel needs to grab the market from Didi, especially in first tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

However, due to the objective reasons such as the compliance operation of online car hailing and license restrictions, it is not easy to achieve this goal for T3 travel.

"The travel industry is very difficult to monopolize and faces a very difficult living environment. On the one hand, the travel market is very large. Only when the local government issues the travel license can it operate legally. Under the jurisdiction of the local government, it is very difficult for a company to monopolize the national market; on the other hand, due to the requirements of safety supervision, there are also issues such as operating costs and profitability. " Zhang Xiang pointed out.

And whether it can break through the current online car Hailing difficult to profit challenge, is also a challenge.

According to Cui Dayong's calculation, for the online car Hailing platform, reaching 5 million units per day is a balance point. On this scale, the cost and income can be leveled, while the daily average of 10 million units can reach the profit point. Cui Dayong predicted that T3 travel could reach 10 million per day in 2023. By then, the fleet size will reach 400000.

In fact, due to the outbreak of two security incidents since 2018, the government has further strengthened the supervision of online car Hailing platforms, drivers and vehicles, requiring that the three certificates of "platform certificate, person card and vehicle license" are complete before they can go on the road. However, at present, the compliance of online car Hailing market is still not optimistic. Cui Dayong said that the compliance rate of China's online car Hailing market is only 22%.

"China's online car Hailing started with a comparison of the ability to burn money, not the management ability." Cui Dayong told reporters that after 2018, the business logic of online car Hailing market competition has changed, from burning money war to compliance operation. With the new business logic, T3 travel has the probability of winning.

It is worth noting that the recent incident of female car users jumping off the bus has once again focused the public's attention on the safety of online car Hailing.

On March 1, Dong Yang wrote an article, pointing out that the hot discussion on the Internet about the death of a girl jumping out of a car in a lorry reflects a long-standing and quite common problem. Some of the online car Hailing enterprises, which are savagely growing, have a high proportion of substandard vehicles and drivers, and lack of adequate security measures.

"To date, there are two problems that need to be solved as soon as possible. One is the compliance of vehicles and drivers. The vehicle must be in good technical condition and can meet the operation requirements. Drivers must not have a criminal record or mental illness. Second, the network connected vehicle enterprises must have safety protection measures, such as the safety alarm device and real-time monitoring in the car Dong Yang suggested.

"The concept of T3 travel is B2C. All operation modes should comply with the regulations, ensure all safety in the whole operation process and put customer experience first." Cui Dayong pointed out that the key to the competition is to insist on providing safe and compliant transport capacity for T3 travel.

Different from didi travel, T3 travel adopts B2C mode. Vehicles and drivers belong to T3 travel. Cui Dayong thinks that this can provide better service and build trust.

The antennae extend to robotaxi

As for the future development trend of the online car Hailing market, Zhang Xiang judged that the "outpost" of the third wave of the online car Hailing market has been sounded, and the automatic taxi (robotaxi) is gradually rising.

"In China, autox has carried out a taxi demonstration operation with no one and no security personnel in Shenzhen. Dongfeng pilot robotaxi has been officially launched in Wuhan, and more players may enter this year." Zhang Xiang told reporters that before the realization of large-scale commercial application of automatic driving, the automatic driving taxi test project is becoming a new track pursued by main engine manufacturers, travel companies and technology giants.

Coincidentally, Cui Dayong believes that "automatic driving is the fundamental logic for car companies to arrange online car Hailing. 2027 will be the turning point for the development of self driving taxis. By then, the cost of self driving taxis will be consistent with the cost of "people + vehicles" now, reaching a balance point. "

In 2020, following autox and didi successively launched driverless taxi service in Jiading, Shanghai, the pilot of auto driving travel service of Volkswagen Group officially landed in Hefei, and obtained the first automatic driving vehicle test license in Hefei. Since 2021, the commercialization of automatic driving field has been rapidly promoted, especially in the robotaxi scene close to C-end users competition.

On January 28, autox officially built China's first fully unmanned operation center in Pingshan District, carried out the demonstration application of L5 level fully unmanned robotaxi fleet, and explored the commercial operation mode.

"In the future, robotaxi players are divided into several categories. One is Didi, including Uber, which is developing self driving taxis; the second is Internet companies, such as Baidu and Google's waymo. However, their goal of developing robotaxi is to test automatic driving technology, which does not mean they have to enter the industry; and the third category is host plants, representative enterprises It's like Tesla. " Zhang Xiang further pointed out.

However, due to the lack of real application scenarios, high investment cost in the process of commercialization, and limited scale of industrialization, automatic driving has only achieved a technological breakthrough from 0 to 1, and the commercialization landing is still in the mode of "one car, one road, one platform". Only relying on a single enterprise to fight alone is ultimately limited, and it is bound to combine the host plant, travel platform and technology companies.

To this end, T3 travel gathered Suzhou municipal government, FAW, Dongfeng, Chang'an main engine plants, as well as Xiaoma Zhixing, Qingzhou Zhihang and other science and technology companies to establish the auto driving ecological operation Alliance -- Aotou alliance. In the form of ecological alliance, it participated in the commercial exploration of automatic driving, and built Suzhou into the first city to realize automatic driving business.

In this process, based on the Internet of vehicles system, T3 travel can not only accumulate data resources and provide scenarios for the research and development of automatic driving, but also provide a platform for its test and trial operation in advance.

"As long as we are willing to jointly promote the development of automatic driving, we all welcome it, and hope to promote the progress of the whole automatic driving cause through this platform." Cui Dayong pointed out that when driverless, shared vehicles will account for 40% of all vehicles, and shared travel will become a major trend.

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