Internet giants gathered in the online ride-hailing market, Geely or launched another attack.
After the Removal of didi APP, the originally nearly saturated online ride-hailing market ushered in a window period, and the post-echelon players moved with the wind, and capital also poured in, and T3, Mass Travel, etc. have been blessed with funds.
Car companies that have entered the game early have not missed this opportunity, and Geely has increased its capital to its subsidiary Cao Cao Chuxing, which has recently obtained a financing amount of 3.8 billion yuan, but in Geely's planning, a single online ride-hailing platform seems to be insufficient.
Recently, some media reported that Geely will launch the online ride-hailing aggregation platform "Happiness Ten Million Homes", which mainly promotes compliance transportation capacity, and will be open to third-party relatively high-quality compliant transportation capacity providers, which will require third-party platforms to hold their own vehicles.
The layout of new energy vehicles is not as good as expected, Cao Cao's travel performance is not outstanding, and it is not unreasonable for Geely to enter the online ride-hailing market again.
However, in the current online car market, not only the layout strength of traditional car companies and Internet companies still exists, but the aggregation platforms such as AutoNavi Taxi and Meituan Taxi have already occupied most of the market by virtue of traffic advantages, how many opportunities does Geely have?
Holding three cards in hand, do you still want to do an aggregation platform?
As early as 2018, OEMs have blown a wave of entry into the online ride-hailing market, when FAW, BMW, Great Wall, Daimler and SAIC and other vehicle brands have deployed in this field.
To this day, GAC's Ruqi Travel, SAIC's Xiangdao Travel and Geely's Cao Cao Travel still occupy a place in the online ride-hailing market, in addition, Geely has also laid out two major platforms, Courtesy Travel and Yao Travel, focusing on customized travel and high-quality travel respectively.
For car companies, the layout of online car can open up sales channels for their new energy models, under the siege of new power car companies and Internet companies, the breakthrough of traditional car companies in this new market is not smooth, online car is a good way to help increase sales and digest production capacity.
Take GAC AION S as an example, the model was listed in May 2019, officially put into the daily operation of Ruqi Travel in August of the same year, and then took only two years to achieve 100,000 vehicles off the production line, setting a record for the fastest record in China's high-end pure electric intelligent car market, in October this year, AION S is still the only model on the list of GAC, ranking seventh, higher than the ideal ONE and Xiaopeng P7 and other models.
Ride-hailing can also help car companies reach customers directly, collect customer and road information, and upgrade product matrix and accelerate intelligent transformation. For example, just over a year after its official operation, Cao Cao Chauffeur (the predecessor of Cao Cao Travel) has provided Geely with hundreds of model development proposals.
However, Cao Cao Travel does not seem to have met Geely's expectations, Aurora data shows that after Didi removed the shelves, although its market share jumped to the waist of the online ride-hailing platform, the loss is also getting bigger and bigger, in the first three quarters of this year, Cao Cao Travel's net loss reached 1.965 billion yuan, which has exceeded the 1.886 billion yuan in the whole of last year.
In addition, the degree of standardization of CaoCao Travel's operation also needs to be improved, and its compliance rate in November was only 64.7%, which is far lower than that of similar players, and the presence of Courtesy Travel and Yao Travel in the market is even lower.
Although the new energy development strategy was announced six years ago, Geely has long lacked some "independent brother" style in the field of new energy vehicles, and the aggregation taxi platform may be an attempt to find new sales channels for Geely, and it can also help it enter the online ride-hailing market with a new model and increase profitability.
The idea is good, but reality can punch in the face
After Didi removed the shelves, the order volume of multiple online ride-hailing platforms increased significantly, and data from the Ministry of Transport showed that in July after Didi took down the shelves, the number of online ride-hailing platforms with orders of more than 300,000 increased by 4 compared with June, reaching 17.
From the perspective of order increases, among the platforms with orders of more than 300,000, such as Qi Travel, Zhaozhao Travel and Shouqi Ride-hailing, etc., all rose by more than 50% in July, and some even reached three digits, while in June, only three orders increased, and the increase was in single digits.
But one point that cannot be ignored is that the main contributor to the high increase is the lower base, and Didi previously occupied nearly 90% of the market share, which means that small players already have a huge space for counterattack.
So although the increase looks like a "surprise", the actual order volume of the platforms and Didi still have a certain gap, Didi's listing prospectus shows that the daily order volume is about 25 million, and the comprehensive media reports, Cao Cao Travel, Meituan Taxi and other platforms are basically still hovering at the million level, and even some media joked, "The 'reserve army' of online car ride-hailing is busy with a lonely", "There is no one who can fight".
The "reserve army" has staged a face-punching drama, is there a way out for the aggregation platform?
AutoNavi and Meituan have already taken a staking ground in the aggregation model, and absorbed the first batch of target users, and can use the traffic of the main business to drain the online ride-hailing business, Geely is not dominant in this regard, and lacks a certain foundation.
From the perspective of transportation capacity, Happiness Requires third-party platforms to hold vehicles, but the supporters behind such platforms are usually car companies that compete with Geely, and may give preference to other aggregation platforms.
In addition, according to ZAKER News observation, in addition to larger companies such as Ruqi and Xiangdao Travel, which will settle in multiple aggregation platforms at the same time, most smaller companies will only choose to join one platform, which means that the happy tens of millions of families without a first-mover advantage may have few choices when looking for allies.
In general, the happiness of tens of millions of families in the traffic side and the capacity side are not relatively competitive, you may need to spend some time to strengthen their own team through marketing and alliances, to make up for the lessons left behind.
Will compliance be a breakthrough?
"Happy Tens of Millions" requires third-party transporters to own vehicles, which is fundamentally different from the loose cooperation methods adopted by meituan, AutoNavi and other aggregation platforms, which can ensure the operation of vehicles and drivers to a large extent.
Starting from the direction of compliance may bring some possibilities to Geely.
Because when the post-echelon players attack the city, the chaos of various types of online ride-hailing industries such as low-price pulling, ground pushing, and illegal operation has also made a comeback, and even shows a sense of déjà vu in the industry that has regressed.
For example, in addition to low-cost marketing and the use of user social circles to pull new, a few years ago the online car war used the local push model also reappeared in the jianghu, ZAKER News has previously reported that recently in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Foshan and other parts of the city subway stations and other areas, there have been a lot of push personnel, with half-price taxi, free taxi slogan to solicit customers, seriously disrupting the market order.
In addition, in order to improve the capacity of some platforms, the audit of newly registered drivers is not carried out in accordance with the prescribed process, resulting in illegal operations in the industry is not uncommon, and data from the Ministry of Transport shows that the compliance rate of multiple platform orders exceeding 300,000 is still less than 50%.
Among them, the compliance rate of Xiangdao Travel and Ruqi Travel, which are also laid out by car companies, ranks in the top two, while Cao Cao Travel ranks tenth, and the compliance rate is nearly 30% different from that of Xiangdao Travel.
Figure: WeChat public account of the Ministry of Transport
Therefore, for Geely, whether from the internal layout or from the perspective of the industry environment, "compliance" is a more appropriate and accurate main direction of attack. And Geely may be able to be a pioneer, prompting other car companies to take the business of online car more seriously.
In the absence of first-mover advantage and traffic advantage, how to attract other third-party platforms, how to find a balance between compliance, service quality and rapid expansion, are difficult but must give answers to the problem, if you can not find a solution in the short term, then this is likely to become a thunderous, rainy project.
According to media reports, Ali's previous investment in the traditional taxi company Volkswagen Travel is to help AutoNavi build its own transportation capacity, which means that other aggregation platforms with traffic advantages have also realized the importance of compliant transportation capacity, and Geely must speed up the starting speed.
In the new round of automobile revolution, Geely is facing a double squeeze from traditional car companies and new power car companies, and the cross-border entry into the mobile phone industry has shown some "panic and no choice", and now it is quite a bit of a struggle to enter the online car market.
Produced by ZAKER News
Text / Bao Xingwa
Editor / Zeng Xiantian