"This car has been parked here for a long time. It has been more than 20 days in less than a month. I owe hundreds of parking fees. Some people wanted to drive away a while ago, but I stopped them. When I heard that there was so much parking fee, I parked it immediately." A security guard in a parking lot in Wangjing area of Beijing pointed to a dusty time-share rental car in the corner and told Understand Note that if no one pays the parking fee, the car will definitely not be able to drive away.
In fact, this is just a microcosm of the various embarrassments encountered by time-sharing rental cars.
Not long ago, some media broke the news that the time-sharing rental brand Tuge had withdrawn from the Nanjing market and was in arrears with the wages of its ground staff. Subsequently, Tuge denied this series of news and announced a new round of financing news to boost morale. However, shortly after the financing news was announced, many users once again expressed online that Tuge’s deposits were difficult to refund, no one answered the customer service phone calls, and the online customer service was pushy.
In Baidu Tieba's "Tuge Bar" and Sina's Black Cat complaint platform, you can see that many recent complaints from Shenzhen, Nanjing, Chengdu, Beijing Users in Beijing, Guangzhou and other places reported that it was difficult to refund deposits and advanced gas fees. Many users reported that it had taken more than 7 working days since they applied for deposit refunds; some users received a reply from the platform that it would take about 20 days for the deposit to be refunded.
Some users suggest that users who have not been able to get their deposits are advised to call the local "12315" and choose manual complaints. They may get their deposits faster. However, users in some cities still reported that after dialing the local 12315, they received feedback that they asked to dial 12315 in Beijing to make a complaint.
On the one hand, there is good news about official re-financing, and on the other hand, there are complaints from users about refunding deposits and paying gas fees in advance. Is this just a case of one platform, or is the entire time-sharing car market experiencing a cold wave? After all, Tuge is a well-known company in this market, and from the collection and compilation of information from all aspects, we have also learned about the current situation of this market from different angles.
In five years, where is the time window for car sharing?
According to statistics from the Automobile Business Magazine, the first time-sharing car rental company in China is Yika Green, which was registered on June 14, 2013. In the past five years or so, many time-sharing leasing companies have appeared one after another. Especially since 2016, taking advantage of the trend of the sharing economy, batches of time-sharing leasing companies that have replaced "shared cars" have appeared in front of the public, and have gradually gained a lot of support from the capital market.
However, as the trend of the sharing economy subsides, most of these once-popular "shared cars" have collapsed, and the remaining companies have also taken off their "sharing" vests and returned to the old road of time-sharing leasing. Among the companies that have fallen, there are many that have received tens of millions of dollars in financing. EZZY, which declared bankruptcy and disbanded in October last year, is one of them.
During this period, the market has experienced various ups and downs, and relevant policies have also provided considerable support. For example, in August 2017, relevant departments jointly issued the "Guidance on Promoting the Healthy Development of Small and Micro Bus Rentals", which clearly stated that the use of new energy vehicles should be encouraged to carry out time-sharing leasing, and support should be provided in the layout and construction of charging infrastructure. But after the big waves washed away the sand, now looking atIn the entire market, among the car time-sharing rental platforms that are still "alive", there is still no independent giant.
Although many platforms have survived, they are not very large. In the entire travel field, the time-sharing rental market has not only not seen star companies similar to those in the shared bicycle field, but also seems to be a bit too "low-key".
In addition to Tuge, which was exposed to various difficulties this time, the situation of several other leading companies is not very optimistic. GOFUN, a subsidiary of Shouqi Group, received 214 million yuan in Series A financing in November last year. It is currently one of the leaders in the time-sharing leasing field, but its monthly active users are still far behind market expectations. According to data from Analysys Qianfan, as of July this year, GOFUN had only 1.34 million monthly active users, and Tuge, which caused market controversy, had only 63,500 monthly active users.
This kind of overall user volume is indeed not on the same level as the volume of online ride-hailing and shared bicycle leading platforms, which can easily reach tens of millions or even hundreds of millions. The shared bicycle industry, which also has a heavy-asset operation model, has quickly said goodbye to its barbaric growth and crazy expansion after experiencing dazzling stars, and has now entered a period of consolidation. The time window in the capital market has closed, and now timeshare leasing seems to be in an extremely embarrassing situation.
High threshold and "unspeakable" user experience
Regarding the current embarrassing situation of the time-share rental market, a senior analyst in the industry told Notes: "The introduction of relevant policy incentives at the national level only releases a favorable direction for the market and efforts. However, the main reason that currently limits the expansion of this industry is that the entry threshold is too high. After all, cars are no better than bicycles. In terms of unit cost, If it is nearly a hundred times higher, it will be difficult for the platform to cover a large area of the market in a short period of time. Without the guarantee of volume, it is impossible to achieve a breakthrough in the total number of users and operating conditions. "
Purchasing vehicles is the largest early investment cost for these car-sharing rental platforms, and in order to reduce costs as much as possible, the platform parties will choose to cooperate deeply with domestic vehicle companies to reduce the purchase price. An internal manager of a medium-sized timeshare rental platform told Understand Notes: "Most companies will choose to cooperate with different car companies in the early stage, so the vehicle purchase price will be much lower than the retail version on the market."
However, even under this premise, the overall investment in purchasing vehicles for the platform is still huge. Taking Tourgo as an example, the main vehicles currently operated by Tourgo in Beijing include smart, Citroen C3, Peugeot 2008 and other models. If the average purchase cost of each vehicle is calculated as 60,000 yuan, then Tuge’s A-round financing of 25 million yuan can only purchase about 400 vehicles.
The national market is rapidly expanding, covering major first- and second-tier cities. How many cars and how much investment does this require?
If the vehicle investment is small, it will be difficult to achieve large-area scene coverage in major cities across the country. This will cause a series of practical problems for users such as few sites, few vehicles, and low utilization rate.
However, although the purchase cost of vehicles is high, it is still not the majority of expenditures on these platforms. Data shows that the cost of daily operations is actually higher than the cost of vehicle purchase. The managers of the above-mentioned time-sharing leasing platform said to understand notes: "
We can draw some conclusions from the trucks loading and unloading shared bicycles that we often see every day.
Although the investment of ground staff helps to improve the utilization rate of time-sharing rental vehicles to a certain extent, it also significantly increases the cost of platform operation. In addition, even if the platform maximizes the vehicle utilization rate, it will still be delayed due to low overall vehicle investment and parking fees. Due to reasons such as vehicle accidents requiring repairs, violent driving causing breakdowns, etc., the user experience cannot be significantly improved.
Image source: Weibo @Chen Zhixue
As a former time-share rental car user, Mr. Wu, who works in Wangjing, told Understand Notes: "The number of such time-share rental cars seems to be quite small, and it is difficult to find them on the roadside as quickly as bicycles. Users often have to look for a car for a while before using it, and after finding the car, they are not sure that it can be used. There are often situations where the car cannot be unlocked (for example, there is no signal in the basement), is damaged, has low battery life, and needs to pay additional parking fees in non-designated parking areas. In addition, quite a few cars are very dirty inside, and you can often see 'souvenirs' left by the previous user. "
For him, it is not easyto drive this kind of 'shared' car smoothly.
When Dongdong Note asked him why he still registered and used it since the experience was not good, Mr. Wu said: "It felt new at first. After all, driving by yourself is different from taking a taxi to work. In addition, the subsidies for these platforms were very large in the past, and the actual cost of using it was much cheaper than taking a taxi. However, the subsidies are not as large as before. The overall prices of these platforms are about the same, and it is not as convenient as taking a taxi, so I applied for a refund of the deposit. "
Is the rigid demand for time-sharing rental a false proposition?
As for the future of the time-sharing car rental market, some business people have previously believed that the maturity of autonomous driving technology will usher in unimaginable development opportunities for the time-sharing rental market. Indeed, if autonomous driving technology (L4 level) can really Once it matures, it can save a considerable amount of time and cost for users to pick up and return cars, while greatly improving turnover efficiency.
However, it can be said that the innovation of autonomous driving technology is difficult to achieve overnight. In addition, the maturity of autonomous driving technology will also be fully applied in online ride-hailing and other fields. This is disruptive to the business model of the entire large travel market.
At this stage, if online ride-hailing solves long-distance travel (more than 2 kilometers), and shared bicycles solve the last mile, then where should the use scenarios of time-sharing rentals fall? Look, time-sharing rental has a lot of overlap with other market segments.
A senior analyst in the industry told Dongdong Notes: "At this stage, time-sharing rental is not as necessary as shared bicycles or some urgently needed sharing projects. In fact, it is very replaceable. Although online car-hailing may not have developed earlier than it, the convenience is definitely a lot higherlevel, and the price/performance ratio is more reasonable. Therefore, for time-sharing rental application scenarios, market competition is fierce and substitutability is also very high. "
Faced with the current situation of time-sharing leasing, the most ideal usage scenario for ordinary consumers is that there are available vehicles in the parking area closest to them, and the car is clean and tidy, without paying additional parking fees. After arriving at the destination, there are available parking spaces nearby for easy parking. But with the current domestic situation In terms of the car usage environment and the financial strength of each platform, it is probably impossible to realize such a usage scenario, especially in first-tier cities with high land prices and complex traffic conditions.
So, despite the favor of capital and favorable policies, the time-sharing leasing market still encounters various difficulties such as vehicles, license plates, parking resources and other public resources. Vehicle dispatching, operation and maintenance, management and user habit cultivation also require a large amount of capital investment and a longer cultivation time.
However, how long can the current market situation give players in the time-sharing rental market?
It can be said that how to find a more suitable one for yourself and the current situation between user experience and overall cost? Adapting a business model to the market environment, avoiding subsidy wars like online ride-hailing, and abandoning the huge waste of resources that occurred in the later stages of the bicycle market are the current top issues for many time-sharing rental platforms. After experiencing blind expansion and rapid expansion, the remaining players in the market may wish to think about what new ways to play this asset-heavy road.