Why isn’t carpooling popular in China?

After a year-long battle between Tencent's WeChat Didi Dache and Alibaba's Kuaidi Dache in the taxi-hailing software market, Baidu has also joined the battlefield and announced its investment in the global taxi-hailing software Uber. Currently, Uber's valuation has reached 40 billion US dollars. At the beginning of this year, Uber entered the Chinese market and has been operating pilots in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

Uber is popular, and the domestic taxi app war has been upgraded to the middle and high-end groups of urban car users. We have seen that in July this year, both Kuaidi Taxi and Didi Taxi expanded the original APP functions and launched mid-to-high-end private car services. Kuaidi developed the taxi-hailing application No. 1 Private Car, and Didi Taxi launched Didi Private Car in August. At the same time, in addition to taxis and private cars, there is also a carpooling APP, and the prototype of carpooling is Lyft in the United States. Lyft is an application that provides private car ride services. Its model is to show friends with cars according to your needs. Passengers can use the APP to navigate to the destination on the mobile map in real time. Lyft carpooling is 80% lower than the average taxi fare. Through "social driving services", it encourages car owners to make friends with passengers. In foreign countries, Lyft has become popular. In China, carpooling software such as Didi, Haha, AA, Weipinche, and Aipinche have emerged. Although the Spring Festival travel rush is approaching, carpooling software is still in a tepid state. Why can't carpooling become popular in China?

From taxi-hailing to carpooling: the market is constantly trying to match user needs

From taxis to private cars to carpooling, it is a process of continuous trial and error in the market to continuously match user needs. But we know that both private cars and car rentals face a shortage and bottleneck of car sources. At present, the travel patterns of urban people face a time window for optimizing and integrating car resources. Because the potential demand in the car market in big cities is huge, but the car sources and drivers are far from meeting the current car needs of urban white-collar workers. Relevant data show that Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou add one small and medium-sized city every year, and the contradiction between traffic congestion, population resources and the carrying capacity of public services is very prominent.

Previously, a commentator pointed out: "Looking around, among the busy streets, there are several cars filled with four people. China has 140 million cars. If the transportation capacity of these cars can be fully mobilized, even if only one-third of the transportation capacity can be fully utilized, it is estimated that the problems of public transportation, traffic jams, smog weather, etc. in major cities can be solved by half." From the perspective of urban development conditions and user needs, the carpooling software platform has actually ushered in a time of development.

Special car applications involve consumers, car rental companies, and labor dispatch companies. Carpooling apps act as intermediaries, activating private cars to link users and car owners, simplifying the process of all parties in the interest chain. The core value of carpooling software lies in connecting some white-collar workers in public buses and subways with idle parking spaces of car owners to form complementary needs. That is, car owners have the need to subsidize fares and fuel costs, while passengers have the need to improve their own transportation comfort. Generally speaking, users only need to publish their carpooling routes through carpooling applications, and carpooling software can intelligently match corresponding car owners or passengers in the user database, so that passengers can get out of the subway and bus and take a "ride" to save taxi costs, while car owners can also release vacant seats and get a certain amount of fuel subsidies according to the established agreement, reducing the cost of using the car.

Carpooling apps focus on the loser economy, which is in line with national conditions

As mentioned above, the transition from taxis to carpooling is a process of constantly catering to the needs of market users. Taxi and business cars cater to urban white-collar workers who have a certain pursuit of quality of life or have a medium-to-high income. However, carpooling focuses on the loser economy. For example, Lyft carpooling is 80% lower than the average taxi fare. It is also in line with the trend of optimizing resource allocation in cities.

Therefore, the carpooling service APP that connects car owners and users with commuting as the center point solves the interests of car owners by helping them find suitable fixed carpoolers and reducing their driving costs. From the perspective of user costs and the long-term sticky relationship between car owners and users on fixed routes, although the scenarios and costs of carpooling are very affordable, the problems faced by carpooling software platforms are more complicated.

The technology, application scenarios and other chain logic involved in carpooling are complex and start-up companies are unable to control them.

At present, a core problem that prevents carpooling applications from becoming large and not being done well is the matching rate of routes and the response rate of orders. The response rate is a bigger bottleneck. You should know that if a user downloads a carpooling application, the experience of the first use largely determines the user's loyalty to a carpooling software and user retention. Getting a response from the car owner is the most basic and most important requirement. Therefore, from the perspective of user needs, general users experience carpooling software and basically uninstall it immediately after failing to get a car once or twice. How carpooling applications can achieve effective order response rate and route matching rate is the pain point of users. At present, domestic carpooling software needs to focus on the basic demand of how to enable users to effectively get a car, promote the optimization of experience, and accumulate word of mouth, in order to gradually promote the explosion of this field.

In fact, the problems extended from the low carpooling matching rate and order response rate are more complicated. Compared with business car rentals such as Uber, the chain and logic involved in the carpooling scenario are more complicated, including the route matching rate of carpooling passengers, the number of carpoolers on the same route, who accepts carpooling (matching degree), the integrity of the driver, and how to avoid the risk of illegal taxis? Are the probability and time efficiency of getting a car within the user's expectations? How to achieve effective matching of carpoolers on the same route through the intelligent background matching algorithm? At the same time, how to calculate the payment transaction by segment? How to prevent the occurrence of safety accidents, how to define responsibilities, etc.

It can be seen that the problems that carpooling software has to deal with involve offline dirty and tiring work, smooth payment links, the integrity of private car drivers, matchmaking rate and matching rate, carpooling time, policy monitoring, responsibility definition of safety accidents, intelligent system background and other series of issues, involving social, legal, e-commerce payment, technology and other aspects. At present, most of the carpooling field is small entrepreneurial companies, and there are many shortcomings in technology, resources, talents, platform construction accumulation, and discourse power in the mobile Internet industry chain. At present, domestic carpooling software cannot form a complete business closed loop from user payment to platform construction, and carpooling software is more of a platform attribute. At present, domestic entrepreneurial companies involved in this field do not have enough capabilities to effectively support the construction of the mobile platform of carpooling applications and strengthen the trust of all parties.

On the other hand, whether it is taking a taxi or carpooling, policy supervision cannot be avoided. China prohibits private cars from participating in commercial transportation. In the field of business private cars, the Shanghai Transportation Commission recently seized 12 Didi private cars, accusing them of being black cars. The reason is that some of its private cars are privately owned. According to Yang Xiaoxi, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Transportation Commission, its operation is illegal. That is, it does not have the operating qualifications, but is engaged in profitable operations. Didi private cars only have some vehicles that are privately owned, but there are still many vehicles that are affiliated with travel agencies and car rental companies, and these private cars have operating qualifications.

Carpooling apps are spontaneous matches between private car owners and passengers. Private cars do not have the qualifications to operate, and they are stepping on the red line of policy. It is only a matter of time before carpooling apps are regulated by relevant government departments. For private car owners, the weakness of the platform, i.e., carpooling apps, means that private car owners who join carpooling apps face many considerations and risks in terms of safety, policies, and fines. Therefore, how to overcome the risks of policy supervision and convince a certain number of private car owners to join the carpooling software platform is a major problem.

The social economy of carpooling apps is in line with the general trend, but the social dilemma of strangers needs to be solved

As mentioned earlier, Lyft’s culture is different from Uber’s. Lyft advocates taking rides with strangers and encourages making friends with strangers.

China's national conditions are that white-collar groups have fixed social circles due to their occupations, and the need to make friends with strangers has always existed, as we can see from the popularity of Momo and Wumi. Ride-sharing social networking is a new social model that corresponds to the social needs and development trend of strangers on the mobile Internet.

Uber landed in China and chose to cooperate with local car rental companies, adopting a profit-sharing cooperation model. In terms of service, it continued the American way of thinking, that is, after the drivers are trained and put on the job, they provide customers with a relatively more comfortable and high-end service. This is a global high-quality service and customer experience standard. The American-style high-quality service plus the cooperation with local taxi drivers does not have any adaptation problems in terms of national conditions, culture and safety.

However, the difference between Lyft and Uber is that Lyft has added social elements, that is, a culture that encourages drivers to make friends with passengers. For example, in Lyft's culture, drivers should take the initiative to socialize with passengers, Lyft requires passengers to "fist bump" with drivers when getting on the car to say hello, and also encourages drivers to pass water to passengers, help passengers charge their mobile phones, and play music to resolve the awkward situation of stranger socializing. In the West, there are no major obstacles to strangers making friends. Lyft also emphasizes solving the embarrassment of strangers based on social relationship chains by importing Facebook account information. However, in China, there is no strong trust relationship between strangers. The implicit and introverted culture of making friends has a barrier or distrust for strangers making friends. The cultural social trust problem is a threshold for the implementation of foreign social driving models. In other words, the "social driving" gimmick of "taking a stranger's car" has crossed the ocean to China, and it has not been adapted to the local conditions during the docking and landing, and the trust mechanism has yet to be established.

Will the ride-sharing market eventually become a battle between BAT?

In general, carpooling is a form of sharing economy, and sharing will inevitably bring about social interaction and fans, which will then generate a community economy. This is in line with the general trend of mobile Internet development, but at present, it seems that carpooling applications have no soil for landing in China, whether in terms of policy or culture.

In addition, we have seen that most of the companies emerging in the carpooling field are entrepreneurial companies, such as Dida, Haha, AA, Weipinche, Aipinche and other applications. Aipinche was founded by a former Alibaba employee, Dida Tuan was founded by Dida.com, and so on. As mentioned earlier, carpooling applications are actually facing the needs of all parties in the industrial chain, involving the bundling of various links such as technology, capital and payment, while these small entrepreneurial companies are facing many shortcomings and difficulties in these aspects. Therefore, this requires large platform-based Internet companies to intervene in this industry, optimize the resources of the industrial chain, and integrate resources, capital, technology and payment capabilities to promote the explosion of this field.

In the era of mobile Internet, the market environment is changing rapidly. At present, although carpooling applications are at the right time, there is no mature experience and model in this market, both at home and abroad. That is, they are all in the exploration stage of crossing the river by feeling the stones. At present, there are no giant companies in China involved in this field. The future of carpooling applications should belong to Internet companies with advantages in technology, users, and industrial chain, as well as strategic foresight and perfect product landing platform for user needs. The domestic business car rental market eventually developed into a battle between BAT, and I am afraid that the same is true in the carpooling market.

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.