Car as a Service, will you still need a car in the future?

Perhaps in the near future, everyone will no longer want to "own a car", just use it.

The era of cars as assets is over, and the era of cars as services is coming. When you can access vehicles more and more conveniently, cars will no longer be an asset, but a service - you can buy fragmented usage time and extend it to comprehensive life services beyond travel.

In the Chinese market, after a 4.02% year-on-year decline in July, car sales in August this year reached 2.103 million units, a year-on-year decline of 3.75%. So far, the domestic car market has experienced negative sales growth for two consecutive months. In the old car powerhouses, such as Europe across the ocean, the new car purchase rate has fallen by 25% since 2007.

By 2030, 20% of the automotive industry's revenue and 36% of its profits will shift from car sales to services, with young consumers preferring the right to use a car rather than ownership.

In recent years, the state has also issued guidance opinions to support the sharing economy and encourage the development of private car sharing. This also makes shared travel more promising. In March 2016, ten national ministries mentioned in the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting Green Consumption": "Support the development of the sharing economy, encourage the effective use of idle resources of individuals, orderly develop the leasing of self-owned vehicles, innovate supervision methods, and improve the credit system." The state's support for the private car sharing market has also promoted the rapid development of the industry.

China's car rental market is highly fragmented and still has a lot of room for growth. Data shows that the top two traditional car rental companies in China only account for 10% of the entire car rental market in China. At the same time, the overall penetration rate of China's car rental market is quite low compared to other developed countries, only around 0.4% - 1.6% in the United States and 2.5% in Japan. With the penetration of the "sharing" concept, more and more people are willing to experience this subversive form of car rental.

At the same time, this also puts higher demands on the products and services provided by enterprises. Refined operation is the core lifeblood of the shared car rental industry. The most important reason why the shared car rental market failed to explode rapidly in a short period of time is that it has extremely high requirements for platform operation capabilities. In the future, cars will not only be an asset, but also a carrier of services.

Car sharing has a broader imagination space and monetization potential around a platform like car sharing: in-depth test drives by users, UBI insurance, self-operated cars, after-sales market, auto finance, and license plate insurance products - using shared car rental as the entry point, providing a series of value-added services around "car + life", all of these services will become possible.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.