The trend of the times and the enterprise have never been separated. Under the tide of new energy and the goal of "double carbon", the car rental industry with trillion tracks has also ushered in a period of change. The mobility of car rentals, the trend of renting instead of selling, and the demand for travel quality under consumption upgrading all remind car rental companies to move towards new energy and intelligence. Nowadays, after more than ten years of development, the car rental industry has tended to integrate the industry, and the one-hi car rental that broke out of the breakthrough and sat in the first echelon has stepped on the trend under the wind outlet. In a sense, switching to new energy is a win-win for both the industry and the company.
The car rental industry has ushered in a new era.
On January 4, Yihi Car Rental and BCG jointly released an industry report entitled "A New Perspective on the Development Trend of the Car Rental Industry", which aims to show that the three major trends of consumption upgrading, new energy intelligent vehicle penetration, and autonomous driving technology evolution are bringing earth-shaking changes to the car rental industry.
Not long ago, car rental companies represented by Hertz began to use new energy vehicles in batches, and behind this action released a very important signal that the car rental industry will usher in a new stage - that is, to embrace new energy.
At present, new energy and intelligence are the consensus of the global automotive industry. In the face of the "new outlet" of the automobile industry, foreign capital and joint venture brands no longer have a leading edge, but stand on the same starting line as us, and may even achieve overtaking. This may be an opportunity to lead the global automotive industry.
The domestic car rental industry was born more than half a century later than abroad, but it has grown rapidly. Like the global car rental industry, technological innovations in China's post-2020 car rental market have reshaped the industry landscape. Players who can grasp the trend will usher in a new round of growth.
The next big deal in the car rental industry
In the past two years, the impact of "double carbon" is far greater than the expectations of home, and the market's expectations for new energy and electric vehicles have evolved from a structural and beneficial supplement to the final comprehensive replacement of traditional fossil energy and fuel vehicles.
Therefore, in the past two years, from new energy vehicles, to midstream batteries, lithium battery main materials, and then to upstream lithium mines, funds have poured in madly and stock prices have soared.
Taking Ideal Car as an example, there were only 20 stores at the end of last year, and at the end of this year, it has approached 200, an increase of 10 times, and the establishment of a large number of new stores has contributed to sales expansion. Credit Suisse expects new energy vehicles to reach a penetration rate of 25 percent by 2025 and 50 percent by 2030.
Interestingly, the number of people and total wealth of this year's Hurun Rich List have increased by more than 20% over last year, mainly due to the rapid growth of new energy-related industries, and the growth of the electric vehicle market has driven the wealth of many Entrepreneurs in China. Half of this year's list is new faces compared to five years ago, which means that new industries and business models are changing the landscape.
In the face of the fierce "green revolution", the car rental industry has gradually shifted from fuel vehicles to new energy, and is undergoing an industrial change.
Car rental is not a new industry. According to research, in the ancient Roman era, there was already a carriage rental business. Since the establishment of the first car rental company in Minneapolis, the car rental industry has gone through a century of history. From the beginning of the 21st century to 2020 after rapid development, the car rental industry has entered the stage of mergers and acquisitions.
The domestic automobile industry only started in the 1980s, and the initial players were mainly large state-owned enterprises. Since 2002, the domestic car rental market has entered a period of rapid development, when the world's largest car rental company Hertz and China Automobile Huaan reached a cooperation and began to enter the market, but at that time, the overseas car rental model was not suitable for Domestic.
However, in the following 10 years, the outbreak of short-term rental demand has attracted many players to enter the game, and emerging domestic leasing companies have emerged. After 2012, the rapid rise of consumer leasing, the industry into a stage of rapid growth, to Yihi car rental, Shenzhou car rental, Shouqi car rental as the representative of the leader has basically completed the short-term rental business layout in important cities across the country. In fact, the Internetization of car rental in the later period, especially the fight for Internet car rentals such as Didi, has also made the industry begin to survive the fittest.
Hi Car Rental has a history of more than ten years since its development since 2006. Although there are constantly new players of greater and smaller sizes entering the game during this period, Yihi Car Rental still firmly occupies the first echelon.
After 20 years of development, China's car ownership has firmly occupied the top spot in the world, with 280 million cars in China in 2020 and expected to increase to 370 million in 2025. But in contrast, the huge Chinese driver's license holder group has reached 420 million people, and the "licensed car-free" population is 140 million people. According to forecasts, by 2025, the size of the "licensed car-free" population will continue to expand, providing potential user reserves for the car rental market.
Car rental is still a trillion-dollar track with huge room for growth, but the focus will shift from traditional fuel vehicles to new energy. In 2019, Didi and BAIC jointly established a new energy vehicle company to jointly build cars, which is actually the tide of new energy.
In addition to Didi, more capital is pouring into this industry, including traditional automobiles, Emerging forces such as the Internet, etc., and the same is true of the car rental industry. Whether it is the user's online habits or policy orientation, behind the rapid increase in sales of new energy vehicles, the next outlet for car rental is already a clear brand.
Compared with the past, the rapid development of the car rental industry has more mature conditions.
For example, China's vast territory and the gradual improvement of transportation infrastructure such as highways, high-speed rail and civil aviation have provided rich soil for tourism self-driving car rental; the world's automotive industry and breakthrough development of mobile Internet have further promoted the mature and rapid growth of the car rental industry.
The layout of "new energy vehicles" has long been started
After a round of reshuffling, the current head of the domestic car rental industry is mainly based on Yihi car rental and Shenzhou car rental, and compared with Shenzhou car rental, Yihi car rental should be established earlier. The ability of Hi Car Rental to stand out from a large number of car rental companies has a lot to do with its dedicated attitude and pursuit of service.
In order to meet the diverse needs of users, Yi hi car rental provides a variety of ways to use the car, and supports personalized customization. Users can customize a different way of travel according to their actual situation. According to relevant data, at present, Yihi Car Rental has opened more than 8,000 service outlets in more than 500 cities across the country, covering more than 90% of airports and high-speed rail stations. The huge number of outlets supports its needs for off-site pick-up and return.
A hi car rental business that started with a car rental business, the huge first-hand car source is one of its major advantages. But at the same time, the purchase of vehicles requires a lot of money, and the price and subsidies of new energy vehicles are more attractive than fuel vehicles.
The three major trends of consumption upgrading, new energy intelligent vehicle penetration, and autonomous driving technology evolution are bringing earth-shaking changes to the car rental industry. In fact, before the outbreak of new energy, Yihi Car Rental has begun to lay out new energy. Car rental companies and vehicle manufacturers usually maintain a good cooperative relationship, from the vehicle manufacturers to buy new cars at a lower discount, and with the traditional car companies into new energy, the cooperation between the two sides will be extended from fuel vehicles to new energy vehicles.
As early as 2010, Yihi Car Rental and BYD launched a "test of waters" for new energy vehicle leasing; in 2013, Yihi Car Rental formed a strategic partnership with SAIC Motor, and its first batch of Roewe E50 pure electric vehicles were also invested in the Shanghai car rental market by Yihi, and Yihi Car Rental opened the country's first electric vehicle rental store.
In 2014, Yihi Car Rental not only became the first enterprise user of Tesla, the global leader in new energy vehicles, but also purchased hundreds of TeslaModel S models to put on the market, and once again reached a purchase order with Shanghai Group for thousands of new energy models, including Roewe 550PLUG-IN (Plug-in Hybrid) and Roewe E50; in 2015, Yihi Car Rental joined hands with BMW to deploy 160 BMW Nori 1E pure electric vehicles in the Beijing car rental market.
With the refinement of demand, the car rental business also tends to be intelligent.
In recent years, Yihi Car Rental has cooperated with many domestic and foreign automobile companies, and is the first time to launch new models of cooperative brands to provide users with an in-depth driving experience. For example, in 2021, two new energy vehicles under Jihu will officially enter Yihi.
Among them, the Polar Fox Alpha S 708S+ cruising range exceeded 700 kilometers, and was also equipped with L2.5 intelligent driving, as well as automatic parking and automatic line patrol, automatic far and near light, etc., which can realize magic remote control parking and HWA highway automatic lane change assist and other configurations, which greatly improves the driving experience.
In addition to enhancing the experience, there is also a very important reason for the intelligent car rental, that is, to save operating costs, intelligent and unmanned is expected to significantly reduce the manpower investment of car rental enterprises, effectively saving business operating costs.
A win-win situation for the industry and the company
In fact, car rental companies play a very important role in the value chain of new energy intelligent vehicles. Although the current sales of new energy vehicles have increased significantly, the penetration rate in China is still low, and the purchase volume of car rental companies can promote the increase in sales of new energy vehicles.
The essence of the car rental industry is "sharing the real economy", and "renting" instead of "buying" can promote resource sharing, which is in line with the sustainable development of the national society.
Taking the Yihi car rental data as an example, a rental vehicle can be turned around nearly 70 times on average in a year, it can be a short-distance business transportation for white-collar workers, it can be a means of transportation for family outings, couples can complete a beautiful tour of small cities, can also take young people to see the green water and green mountains, and can also be accompanied by workers on the way back home.
This figure not only shows that the car rental industry can serve different groups, but also means that car rental companies help achieve efficient use of social resources through "sharing" of cars, promote resource sharing, and help the country achieve the "double carbon" goal.
Therefore, in a sense, the transformation of new energy is a win-win situation for this industry and the company.
The car rental market is a race track with huge space.
According to the data, in 2020, the size of China's car rental market will be about 87 billion yuan, and by 2025, this scale will reach about 158.5 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of about 13%, and it is expected to double in the next five years.
After more than ten years of development of the industry, with the change of the supply side, the trend of industry integration is obvious, and the head with brand effect will have more opportunities in the future.
The reason why Yihi Car Rental can be firmly in the first echelon is that its expanding business has gradually formed a closed loop.
Not long ago, the national chain direct car rental brand Yihi Car Rental announced that it had officially entered the second-hand car direct sales store, and the first batch of hundreds of stores covered 29 cities.
It is worth noting that the car rental industry is an asset-heavy industry, and the residual value needs to be managed. According to the report "A New Perspective on the Development Trend of the Car Rental Industry", the average service life of vehicles generally used for rental is three years, and the annual elimination rate is about 33%. In order to maintain the size and quality of the fleet, the head car rental enterprises have an annual renewal of more than 10,000 vehicles, and the eliminated vehicles have a short age and a checkable maintenance record, which is a high-quality second-hand car source.
It is understood that the global situation of chip shortage this year has led to a decline in the supply of new domestic cars, the attributes of the seller's market are obvious, and there are more demand conversions for second-hand cars, which will continue in the short term.
Before the rise of new energy vehicles, the asset-heavy model of Yihi Car Rental has always been a concern to the outside world. One Hi car rental, entering the second-hand car market, opening up the rental and sales model, can not only do the value of high stock of second-hand cars, but also reduce the pressure of funds, thus forming a commercial closed loop.
The new energy vehicle rental at the other end of the layout of Yihi Car Rental is the key to whether it can win the second half. Now, whether it is policy factors or changes in travel modes, they are more inclined to the leasing of new energy vehicles. Not only that, while becoming an accelerator of industrial development, it completes the closed loop from use to ecology.
Responsible Editor | Yellow Sea