Header image source: Network
On November 16, 2020, the eyes of the entire automotive industry were focused on a car called "BYD D1". Not because of how good the green car was, but because the car created a new category of cars at the time - "customized online car".
The oversized rear row can give passengers more legroom, the driver of the online car can take orders on the central control screen, and the back row has an exclusive cup holder and display screen... Before and after the birth of BYD D1, the industry set off a wave of "customized online ride-hailing".
Between 2020 and 2021, such vehicles were once hot. Not only DID BYD and Didi launch the D1, But also Pentium and Didi, T3 Travel and other platforms to create NAT.
The same recipe, the same taste, customized online car once spread in the main engine factory.
There are not a few car companies that plan to enter the online car market, and the customized version of Nezha V online booking in early 2021 and the WM E5 released in the B-end market have been listed. Xiaopeng N5, a car specially built for online ride-hailing cars, has also been "arrows on the string". On the other hand, T3 Travel has said that one-third of the new increase in 2021 will be customized cars.
However, the seemingly lively custom online ride-hailing market has also appeared to be withered and lonely in recent times.
With the decline in demand, the ride-hailing market is shrinking sharply. Every link in the industry and every participant is being tested by "naked swimming". So, how big is the chance of customizing a ride-hailing car?
#壹
Customized ride-hailing is not a "pseudo-demand"
Look back to March 2021, a year ago, when ride-hailing orders were at a high level in previous years. The national online ride-hailing supervision information interaction platform received a total of 760 million orders, equivalent to 24 million online ride-hailing orders every day.
This is also the fourth month of Didi and BYD jointly launching D1. This month, the BYD D1 set a monthly sales of 1166 units. With the joint efforts of the two sides, in the first half of 2021, BYD D1 sold more than 2,700 vehicles in a single month, ranking among the top ten MPV sales in that month.
BYD D1
The advantages of "customization" of models have been widely recognized by the industry. Customized ride-hailing has not only innovated in the body, but also made adjustments in the service model. For drivers, the cost of using the BYD D1 is completely acceptable. The car provides drivers with two modes of half-year rent and one-year rent, with a monthly rent of 4399 yuan for half a year and a monthly rent of 4299 yuan for a year. Compared with the rent of oil trucks, it is about 10% lower, and the platform is more formal.
In other words, a customized ride-hailing car is not a model, but an improved driver-passenger experience. Operating vehicles and private vehicles are not the same in terms of product requirements, functional design, and service experience, which makes more car companies want to enter the market and share a piece of the pie.
After BYD, Dongfeng also plans to launch accurate customized products to meet the needs of shared travel. Cao Cao Travel has also signed an agreement with Ruilan Automobile to jointly promote the "charge and exchange mode" online ride-hailing vehicles from Geely, mainly Maple Leaf 80V and Maple Leaf 60S.
Maple leaf 80V
However, after 2022, due to the impact of the epidemic, the travel market will not return to the previous year.
On April 12, 2022, the Ministry of Transport released the March ride-hailing operation data. According to the data, the national online ride-hailing regulatory information interaction platform received a total of 539 million orders in the month, down more than 29% year-on-year and 2.2% month-on-month.
The serious decline in orders for ride-hailing has fundamentally hit the demand for customized ride-hailing. In March this year, BYD D1 sales were 39 units, down 97.52% year-on-year and 7.14% month-on-month. Compared with the four-digit sales volume in 2021, this car has "aged before aging" and entered the sales volume of the "end of the product" in advance.
The Pentium NAT, which is positioned the same as the BYD D1, sold 558 units in March 2022, but compared with 6890 units in the peak period, it is still a huge downward trend.
From the perspective of the attributes of the model itself, B-end highly customized products such as BYD D1 are relatively narrow in terms of audience. When this car was created, it was branded with the depth of Didi. For example, the BYD D1 is equipped with the DIIA intelligent car machine system, which is developed by Didi and customized for the built-in car machine system of the online car.
In the system, Didi integrates the car version of the driver order receiving system, intelligent voice assistant, face recognition login, driver service and other functions. The D1 also has a "Didi key" on the steering wheel, which the driver master can quickly take orders.
Hardware built for Didi on the D1
Therefore, the main customer of this car is the online ride-hailing platform. Of course, this is also an inherent limitation of such customized ride-hailing cars. "At present, the D1 is not sold to the civilian market." Jiang Yongdang, deputy director of PUBLIC RELATIONS at BYD, said that the total amount of D1 was considerable when signing orders, but later encountered the shock of the online ride-hailing industry.
Recently, VEMO, the largest local new energy transportation operator in Mexico, purchased a total of 1,000 D1s from BYD Mexico, of which 200 have been put into operation in the local area, and these 1,000 D1s will form the largest fleet of pure electric taxis overseas. This may be the "reverse thinking" of BYD D1 - the domestic market cannot be digested, and it is understandable to turn abroad after fine-tuning.
On the one hand, the actual demand for "special vehicles" by online ride-hailing platforms, on the other hand, the uncertain prospects of customized online ride-hailing. So, where should customized ride-hailing go?
#贰
Fighting their own battles, the head platform is difficult to promote model innovation
"In the short and medium term, the market capacity of customized ride-hailing vehicles is not large." Zhang Junyi, managing partner of OliverVita Consulting, said that the development of customized online ride-hailing will be subject to industry needs in the short and medium term.
At present, it is an indisputable fact that the online ride-hailing market has fallen into a period of contraction. Under the decline in demand, all online ride-hailing platforms are inevitably affected. The characteristics of customized online ride-hailing are that they have a strong correlation with the travel platform.
Didi, the first travel platform for customized online ride-hailing, is still in the regulatory investigation stage and does not have the ability to further develop other customized models. As can be seen from the sales curve of BYD D1, after Didi was regulated, BYD D1 sales plummeted, from about 2172 vehicles per month to 280 vehicles per month.
The current second place in the industry is T3 travel, according to statistics, the market share of T3 travel has exceeded 11% since 2022. At this scale, there is still a large distance compared to the industry's head platform. In the process of T3's continuous expansion, it will be compensated by joining drivers, and the increase in self-operated vehicles is relatively slow, which further reduces the demand for customized online ride-hailing vehicles.
Demand is difficult to boost, which is the root cause of the temporary setbacks of customized ride-hailing.
Zhang Junyi said that deep customization of online ride-hailing needs a strong head platform to promote, which will lead to the transformation of the entire industry. "But now some leading companies are unable to undertake this task, and the order volume of other platforms is insufficient, and there are challenges in supporting new models." He said.
Therefore, the further development of customized online ride-hailing is difficult to promote with the strength of one family. But if you want to work with the entire industry to jointly customize online ride-hailing, it will be difficult for travel platforms to reach an agreement.
Different ride-hailing platforms have different investors, and these investors have their own related car companies. As far as promoting customized ride-hailing is concerned, each travel platform is more inclined to use the parent company's vehicle. For example, most of the vehicles in Caocao Travel are Geely's automobile brands, and Most of the vehicles in Xiangdao Travel are SAIC passenger cars.
T3 Mobility Fleet
In the case of separate battles, it is difficult for the industry to form a synergy at present. Standardizing the standards of online ride-hailing and improving the safety of online ride-hailing are public safety issues that the government wants to solve. However, such a problem is difficult to use administrative orders to promote car companies to launch customized models, because this is a market economic behavior.
What's more, in terms of cost, the cost of customized ride-hailing vehicles is far less than that of improving existing models. "If car companies develop new platforms for customized online car-hailing, the cost of customized production lines is very high, and the purchase volume of general online ride-hailing platforms cannot support such a line, or it needs flexible production." Zhang Junyi said.
The current taxi is a good example, and the Santana purchased by the taxi company is very different from the Santana sold on the market. For car companies, just by reducing the number of colors, or strengthening the rear row, you can get the model of the online car, without changing the production line.
When the B-end model shares a production line with the C-end model, the cost of the model can be further diluted. Cao Cao Chuxing is the application of the Maple Leaf 80V model, and this car is also improved by Geely Jiaji.
In addition, the travel platforms under car companies usually play a role in "digesting inventory". Huaxia Travel, a subsidiary of BAIC, ordered thousands of Jihu cars and linked cloud to use Qoros cars, which further compressed the living space of customized online ride-hailing vehicles.
#叁
Drivers are less willing to change
In the development of customized online ride-hailing, not only does the platform rarely have the motivation to replace customized online ride-hailing, but it is also difficult for the drivers of the platform to respond to the call of the platform.
Even if the stock of online ride-hailing is revitalized, the platform cannot replace all its models with customized ride-hailing vehicles – different business segments of the online ride-hailing platform have completely different requirements for models.
In the field of high-end travel, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi and other brands occupy the vast majority of the share, in this field to launch customized online car-hailing, or will pull down the tone of luxury travel. Relatively speaking, ride-hailing platforms will not test the waters in this field.
Shine travel
In the "special express car", the largest single travel business field, whether it is Didi or T3 travel, most of its drivers are franchised rather than self-operated. Naturally, this model is less binding on drivers, and the willingness of drivers to take the initiative to replace vehicles with customized online ride-hailing vehicles no longer exists.
Du Can (pseudonym), a senior researcher at a travel platform, said that online car drivers usually buy their own vehicles at a price of 80,000-90,000 yuan, and the current price of customized online car hire is about 100,000, which is higher than the driver's affordability.
A captain of a fleet of Didi drivers said that most ride-hailing cars are driver-brought vehicles or rental car rental companies.
"Let's change to Didi's own car, you better give some sweetness." The captain said, "Otherwise, who is willing to change." ”
After years of development, car rental companies have formed a solid purchase agreement with existing car companies. Therefore, this part of the market will not be leveraged by customized online ride-hailing vehicles.
Didi was the first to launch customized online ride-hailing cars, but until now, only a small number of car owners have driven the BYD D1. With a strong platform like Didi, it is still difficult to promote customized online ride-hailing, which shows that it will be more difficult for some weak platforms to force drivers to buy or rent customized online ride-hailing vehicles.
In addition, another concern of drivers in replacing customized online ride-hailing cars is the "second-hand residual value rate" of customized online ride-hailing vehicles.
The residual value rate of the existing model of the online ride-hailing version is much higher than that of the customized online car- Taking Xuanyi purchased by a large number of online ride-hailing drivers as an example, the big data of Autohome shows that the second-hand retention rate of Xuanyi is about 58.68%, while the BYD D1, which has the dual nature of "operating vehicles" and "electric vehicles", has a second-hand car retention rate that is far lower than this figure.
For drivers, each sum is a cost worth calculating.
Pentium NAT
At present, customized online car-hailing is still facing problems in all aspects, and many car companies are "stopping the flag" in this regard, which is the clear evidence of the development of the industry. "The trend in the future is that customized ride-hailing cars may appear, but they will not be sold under the name of 'customized ride-hailing', which is also to expand to the personal consumption market." Du Can said, "Who would want their own car to be an online car?" ”
Under the epidemic, the traffic in individual cities has been suspended, which is a big blow to the travel industry. "However, customized online ride-hailing vehicles that will still face development pressure in the short and medium term still have broad prospects in the long run." Zhang Junyi said that after all, online car-hailing vehicles have different requirements from private models, and the demand for local customization, modification and replacement chassis is still continuous, and even automatic driving.
"For example, the comfort type of ordinary family cars is strengthened by the front row, and the online car is strengthened by the rear row, and the use scenarios of the two are different, and the design concept will be very different."
In the future, taxi oil to electricity is also a huge market. According to data from China Automobile Research Institute, by 2025, the number of new energy vehicles for online ride-hailing vehicles will reach the level of 2.4 million. At the same time, there are about 1.4 million cruise taxis in the country, and a large number of oil trucks need to be replaced by new energy vehicles, which is a huge market.
It will take time for the travel industry to recover, and now what car companies and the travel industry have to do is to stick to confidence and wait for the flowers to blossom.
End
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