Looking back at 2021, in the field of shared bicycles, Hello, Meituan, and Green Orange have formed a three-legged standing situation. Ai Media Consulting analysts believe that the current shared bicycle market is in a stable period, and with the initiatives of carbon neutrality, healthy travel and other initiatives and users gradually adapt to the market, the scale of shared bicycle users will have a substantial leap in space.
At the same time, in order to solve the persistent problem of random parking and random parking of shared bicycles, platform enterprises have cooperated with the government to continuously introduce technical functions such as "settlement in the column".
However, there are still undesirable phenomena such as random posting of small advertisements and malicious insertion of needles in the cushion of shared bicycles, which require the platform and relevant departments to continue to strengthen supervision. In addition, while sharing bicycles continue to standardize and move forward, shared motorcycles are out of reach.
The pattern of sharing bicycles is obvious, and motorcycles are inferior due to multiple restrictions
According to Ai Media Consulting data, in 2017, the scale of shared bicycles in China achieved a substantial increase, with a growth rate of 63.2%, and the scale of users exceeded 200 million. Since then, the scale of the shared bicycle market has continued to expand and reached 18.348 billion yuan in 2019, an increase of 37.99% year-on-year. In 2020, the number of users in the shared bicycle market reached 253 million.
From the perspective of market distribution, after Ofo was trapped in the capital problem and Mobike was acquired by Meituan, shared bicycles were concentrated in the three platforms of Hello, Meituan and Qingorange.
According to public information, as of August 31, 2021, Haro Travel's Haro sharing two-wheel business has entered more than 400 cities (including county-level cities) across the country, with users riding a total of 24 billion kilometers, accumulatively stationed in more than 1,000 universities and 500 scenic spots; according to Didi Chuxing's prospectus, as of March 31, 2021, the Green Orange Fleet consists of 5.2 million bicycles and 2 million electric bicycles, distributed in more than 220 cities in China; Meituan has not disclosed relevant data.
The reporter used "shared bicycle" as a keyword to search in Tianyancha and found that there were a total of 219 related project brands, and only one new one was added in 2021, mainly involving automatic driving sharing single-person transportation equipment. Among the 219 related brands, there are many motorcycle companies such as Xiaoliang Sharing and Xiaobei Travel.
The reporter found that compared with shared bicycles, the development of shared motorcycles is not prominent in 2021. According to Ai Media Consulting data, the number of shared motorcycles in China has reached 1 million in 2019, and it is expected that the number of shared motorcycles will reach 8 million in 2025. Despite this, the reasons why Chinese netizens choose not to ride shared motorcycles are the difficulty of returning cars and finding cars, accounting for 60.6% and 49.6% respectively.
Ai Media Consulting analysts believe that due to the high cost of shared motorcycles, the amount of shared motorcycles is not as good as that of shared bicycles, and the problems of large restrictions on the return area, insufficient endurance and high costs have become factors restricting the development of shared motorcycles.
In this regard, Chen Liteng, an e-commerce analyst of life services at the E-commerce Research Center of the Network Economic and Social Society, analyzed to reporters that in terms of policy, the attitude of first- and second-tier cities and sinking markets is completely different. The core cities represented by Beijing and Shanghai clearly do not encourage the development of shared motorcycles. The second, third and fourth tier cities and below have relatively loose controls on shared motorcycles, but they also have provisions on the release quota and operation management of shared motorcycles.
Therefore, in his view, the development of the first- and second-tier markets with large market space and suitable for rapid expansion is limited, and the power point of shared motorcycles is mainly in the county market, and the county market has the following characteristics compared with the first- and second-tier cities: The traffic environment is less perfect. Compared with the developed public transportation network in first- and second-tier cities, the relatively imperfect public transportation lines in the sinking market provide a more suitable development space for shared motorcycles, but the decentralized market also inhibits the development speed of shared motorcycles.
New features such as column settlement alleviate the stubborn disease of random stops, and the new technology of fingerprint unlocking needs to be tested
Since the birth of shared bicycles, random parking has always been a headache. The reporter randomly walked on the road and found that shared bicycles did not stop in the demarcated area, occupied blind lanes, and blocked the side of the road.
In this regard, in 2021, many cities and regions have set up electronic fence monitoring and management parking areas. Taking Beijing as an example, on August 18, according to the operation supervision of the Internet rental bicycle industry in the first half of 2021 announced by the Beijing Municipal Transportation Commission, around the rail transit stations and key business circles where citizen complaints are concentrated, the city has built 1181 electronic fence monitoring and management parking areas, which can accommodate more than 65,000 Internet rental bicycles. At the same time, as a unified operation area, the total scale of vehicle delivery in the central urban area is controlled within 800,000 vehicles, and about 128,000 vehicles are operated in various suburbs.
Hello, Meituan and Qingorange three companies in accordance with the unified standard to limit the use of their vehicles, through the technology upgrade to sense the vehicle position, improve the parking rate in designated areas. Taking Hello as an example, it has launched the "Bluetooth Road Nail" induction technology, which senses the actual position of the vehicle through the Bluetooth signal, and the user can successfully unlock the lock only when parking in the specified parking area; and when parking outside the prescribed white frame, the smart lock of the vehicle will automatically pop open and the order cannot be terminated.
Zhou Ruixiang, a shared bicycle operator, once pointed out to reporters that this technical means has advantages and disadvantages, "If there is this technology, we are really good at control, because users can't lock it will be in a hurry, and they will definitely find a way to lock there, but if there is a lot of traffic in this place, the white box is relatively small, and there are too many cars that rush in instantaneously, which will cause serious accumulation." ”
Recently, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision issued the "Internet Rental Bicycle System Technology and Service Specifications" (hereinafter referred to as the "Specification") pointed out that shared bicycles should have a positioning function, on-board intelligent terminals should include satellite positioning devices, and the positioning accuracy error should be better than 15 meters. For the lessee, the location of the parking area should be marked in the client electronic map, showing the management area, the prohibited parking area, and the boundary of the operation range, and it is advisable to realize the cycling path planning and guide the lessee to return the car to the parking area. Once the shared bicycle is parked in the no-parking area, it should have the functions of early warning and alarm to the enterprise operation platform.
It is understood that the Specification will be implemented from April 2022. According to the experience of other cities, the strict implementation of the "Specification" will play a positive role in alleviating the problem of random parking of shared bicycles. For example, according to zhuhai digital city management statistics, starting in the second half of 2021, the complaints of citizens about the random parking of shared bicycles have dropped significantly, and they are no longer "hot spots" for complaints, which is related to its promotion of the "settlement in the column" function.
In addition, internet platforms try new paths in unlocking ways. On January 11, Beijing Sankuai Online Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Meituan, announced a patent for "vehicle unlocking methods, devices, shared vehicles and storage media".
The abstract shows that the patent application obtains the user's fingerprint information through the fingerprint collection module installed on the shared vehicle, unlocks the shared vehicle and associates the user account, and counts the resource information generated by the use of the shared vehicle based on the user account. This method can directly unlock the shared vehicle through the fingerprint information, without the need to scan the code to unlock.
The reporter checked the sky eye and found that On November 23, 2018, Hello Travel also published a patent called "a shared bicycle intelligent unlocking system". Its summary shows that the present invention discloses a shared bicycle intelligent unlocking system, comprising a bicycle device and a mobile phone management system, the mobile phone management system includes a fingerprint binding module and a two-dimensional code matching module, and the bicycle device comprises a fingerprint reading module, a processing module and an unlocking module connected in turn. However, this has not yet been put into use.
In response to this technology, Zhang Yi, CEO of Ai Media Consulting, pointed out that the application of biometric information is a technological progress, through the use of authority to divide and identify people, the ultimate goal is to form a more efficient correspondence, so as to improve the delicacy of services and improve the efficiency of vehicle unlocking in terms of cycling credit, deduction payment, etc.
Chen Liteng believes that biological information contains important personal information characteristics and can improve the efficiency of users' use of products. However, its use itself has certain risks, and the authorized use of biological information requires service providers to have good credit and strict information management mechanisms, otherwise the leakage of fingerprint information will bring a lot of risk to users.
New technologies are not perfect in the process of invention, and how to protect users' personal information before putting them into use is a problem that every Internet company needs to think about.
Chaos such as random posting of small advertisements and cushion insertions still exists, and the ofo deposit is difficult to refund and then make a trick
Although the phenomenon of random parking has been alleviated in the case of technical support, the situation of "rough" treatment of shared bicycles still exists. The reporter found that many bicycles on the road have become "walking billboards", and many bodies have appeared advertisements such as rental and printing, and even indecent slogans have appeared.
Zhou Ruixiang once pointed out to reporters: "The platform will give the cleaning master a professional degummer and specially clean up the body advertisement." He also said that sometimes the operation and maintenance personnel will paste the advertisements torn from the bicycles on their cars, paste them and then concentrate on cleaning up.
In August 2021, at the Chengdu Golden Bull Jewelry Center, some netizens found that a long needle was inserted into the saddle of The Hello shared bicycle. Subsequently, the topic of #Chengdu a shared bicycle cushion was inserted# appeared on the hot search list, causing heated discussion.
At that time, the Chengdu cycling team of Hello Travel told the Blue Whale TMT reporter: "Strongly condemn this uncivilized behavior of destroying public travel tools and bringing great safety risks to users, and have arranged operation and maintenance personnel to conduct a comprehensive inspection of road vehicles", while pointing out that it noted that the recent "shared bicycle needle" incident is not only Haro, Halo will work with other shared bicycle brands to strengthen the investigation to ensure the safety of the majority of users.
It can be seen that to reduce the occurrence of uncivilized phenomena, it is necessary for the joint efforts of various platform enterprises. According to the "Specification" issued by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision, the operation platform of a shared bicycle enterprise should have the function of identifying the registered ID number and name of the lessee, verifying whether the ID card number and name of the lessee are consistent with the information of the "National Citizenship Information System", and judging whether the lessee meets the conditions for renting a car.
After the arrival of real-name authentication, it is presumably necessary to strengthen the supervision and punishment of similar uncivilized phenomena, which will have a positive effect on ensuring the safety of cycling.
According to Ai Media Consulting data, about half of the respondents use shared bicycles because of environmental protection, exercise and do not want to walk; 39.2% of users choose to share bicycles because they do not want to take the bus; only 25.2% of users choose to share bicycles because of affordable prices.
In the context of the epidemic and double carbon, shared bicycles will still be a compulsory means of transportation for many citizens, and some old users may recall the unreturned deposit during the cycling process.
At the end of November 2021, ofo Mall launched the function of pulling friends to help return deposits. The page shows that the function includes "invite friends, help you return the deposit", "friends place order rewards", "10 yuan special discount recharge and return" and other functions. This move was hotly discussed and criticized by CCTV.
The regulatory authorities clearly require: "In principle, Internet rental bicycle operators do not collect user deposits, the deposits belong to users, and operating enterprises must not misappropriate them." The operating enterprise shall promptly return the user deposit, and shall not refuse or delay the refund, or set unfair and unreasonable standard terms and technical thresholds. ”
Ofo did not tell a good story is now written by the remaining three major platforms, in conjunction with the government under the use of cars will be more standardized, although the pattern has been determined, but ofo left by the deposit refund "spectacle" will from time to time become a "joke" pulled out by the Internet.