Following the guidance of the Gofun APP, I walked into the underground garage of the Santa Meliá Hotel in Zhengzhou and found only a Jetta VS5 sedan with the Gofun logo on the outside of the car. Searching through the whole city of Zhengzhou, only about 100 cars can be found in the Gofun APP, the vast majority of which are Jetta and Bora, which are listed and operated by local car rental companies in Henan, mainly providing daily rental services rather than time-sharing rentals. More than a year ago, Gofun had nearly 900 cars in operation in Zhengzhou.
"Since the second half of 2019, Gofun has withdrawn projects across the country, and Zhengzhou is the last batch In 2019, only a dozen cities remain in operation across the country. Since January this year, Gofun has begun to shrink further, withdrawing from Changsha and other cities, and there are not many cities in actual use. And even in the cities where they operate, the number of outlets and vehicles has shrunk dramatically. Liu Fang, an executive who recently left Gofun, told the first financial reporter.
The bigger crisis lies in Gofun's headquarters, Beijing Shouqi Zhixing Technology Co., Ltd. Liu Fang and a number of Gofun incumbents and former executives interviewed told reporters that Gofun Technology CEO Tan Yi has left at the end of January this year, and the company's many projects across the country have also been withdrawn, and the company is in a "semi-operational" state.
"It is foreseeable that Gofun will continue to shrink this year, and it is not ruled out that it will be shut down this year." Wang Wu, a person close to Gofun's investment, financing and operations department, said.
The first financial reporter learned that Gofun's dilemma is only the tip of the iceberg of the overall dilemma of the entire shared car. Boosted by the concept of sharing economy and capital, in the past 5 years, car-sharing companies have sprung up, with more than 300 companies registered at the most, and as many as 119 car-sharing platforms on the market.
However, since 2020, more and more shared car companies have "thundered", and chaos such as difficult to refund user deposits, arrears of employee salaries, and company closures have frequently surfaced. "There is a high probability that a shared car will become the next shared bicycle. The profit model has not been found, the enthusiasm for capital investment has disappeared, and the industry has entered a vicious circle. In the end, there was only one chicken feather left. Wang Wu said.
Gofun struggled for life and death
Gofun, a car-sharing rental platform at the head, is struggling on the brink of life and death.
According to public information, as the layout of Shouqi Group in the field of shared cars, Gofun was established in August 2015, and the business began to operate in February of the following year. Relying on the unique license plate and parking lot resources of Shouqi Group, it quickly opened up a situation in the new energy vehicle time-sharing rental market. From the perspective of investors, Shouqi Group and BTG Group are the original shareholders of Gofun, and in November 2017, Gofun received a Series A financing of 214 million yuan, while Volkswagen Group and Chery Automobile are strategic investors, both holding 20% and 10% of the shares respectively.
Thanks to the support of shareholders and other parties, Gofun has developed rapidly nationwide, and according to statistics from the Prospective Industry Research Institute, as of March 2019, its vehicle launch in the country was about 28,000-30,000 vehicles, second only to Evcard, a car time-sharing rental company under SAIC. In October 2020, Gofun Technology announced that it had received a Series B financing of hundreds of millions of yuan. In 2019, before announcing this round of financing, Tan Yi had publicly stated that Gofun had achieved profitability in 25 cities across the country, the first profitable enterprise in the industry.
But in fact, in the same month that 25 cities were declared profitable, Gofun began a nationwide strategic contraction. Liu Liwei, a former management person at Gofun Zhengzhou Branch, told reporters that since September 2019, the company began to gradually remove personnel, and the last person left in December 2019 to completely close the store.
According to the information provided by the interviewee and the user's complaint information, Gofun has successively withdrawn from the operation of Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Zhengzhou, Jinan, Kunming, Chengdu, Guiyang and other cities since 2019, and from Changsha and other cities since 2020. At present, although almost all city options in the country are available on the Gofun APP, the vast majority of cities only provide daily rental, long-term rental and other services, and the number of vehicles has been greatly reduced.
A Gofun user in Beijing told reporters that the intuitive feeling from the second half of 2020 is that "there are fewer and fewer outlets with cars." The first financial reporter inquired about the Gofun APP on the afternoon of March 8 and found that many outlets in its Beijing area showed that the number of vehicles was zero or one. Even in the most prosperous centers such as Guomao and Sanlitun, there are not many vehicles in the outlets. For example, in the vicinity of Sanlitun, the outlet with the largest number of vehicles has only six vehicles.
With the withdrawal of Gofun from some operating cities, user complaints began to emerge intensively, many of which were difficult to refund deposits and pre-recharge fees. According to the Black Cat Complaint Platform, Gofun has a total of 7983 complaints. At the same time, the news of Gofun's arrears of employee compensation and a large number of employee departures came out.
After Gofun announced a strategic change in October last year, Tan Yi left the company in January this year. A number of executives who left Gofun told reporters that Tan Yi's departure was closely related to internal employee reports, but the first financial reporter did not directly contact Tan Yi himself and Gofun to respond. But multiple sources show that with the contraction of the city and the departure of the CEO, Gofun's business has come to a standstill.
"Now the company is in a semi-out state, not recruiting, and people leave every day. The salary of the branch is basically in arrears, and the salary of the Beijing headquarters is delayed. Liu Fang said.
The profit model is invalid
"Whether a business model is established or not, there are two main points to see. One is the relationship between supply and demand, and the other is whether the cost and benefit can be balanced. Li Feng told reporters that although there is demand in this industry, the investment is high and the price is low, and it is difficult to achieve a balance between cost and benefit. He introduced to reporters that the cost of car time-sharing leasing mainly includes vehicle depreciation, operation and maintenance, vehicle charging and parking fees. "If a car's daily income is about 120-130 yuan, it is possible to make a profit." But in fact, in operation, Gofun can reach an average of 60 yuan per car per day when it is good, and only 30-40 yuan when it is small.
Li Feng told reporters that Gofun's previous operating vehicles, in addition to a part of the direct purchase, a large part of the other is leased from Shouqi car rental and Shouqi car rental companies, so in fact, on the whole, the assets are not particularly heavy, but even so, the lower frequency of use and income are also doomed, and its flow can only cover about 40%-45% of the cost.
"There are also some companies in the industry that declare profits, but there will be many fixed words in front, such as in a city and a place or at a certain time node, this profit may be established, but the general sense of profitability is impossible." Li Feng told reporters, "Some companies affiliated with this business model that are affiliated with OEMs may be established. "On the one hand, car time-sharing rental companies affiliated with OEMs generally have strong government resources and can obtain resources including parking spaces at low cost; secondly, they can get low-cost cars with lower depreciation costs."
"But time-sharing rental is still too heavy compared to car rental and online car-hailing." Cui Wei, another Gofun city manager, thinks. He told reporters that when Gofun first opened the city on a large scale, many cities such as Zhengzhou, Guiyang, Jinan, Nanchang, Mianyang and other orders were not bad. In the city he was responsible for, for example, a total of 400 cars were put in, and the price was 1 yuan per kilometer and 1 cent per minute, so that 4 orders per car per day could be profitable. At that time, the average daily order volume of bicycles in his city had reached about 3.41 orders, and logically it had basically reached the break-even point. However, because the initial customers basically use coupons and subsidies, even if the order volume comes up, it can basically only cover about half of the cost.
"The cost is too high." Cui Wei revealed to reporters that in addition to the cost of the vehicle itself, there are also investments in various aspects including vehicle exterior decoration, vehicle installation, parking space investment, charging fees and personnel scheduling costs before the launch. "At that time, 400 cars, we invested more than 1,000 outlets in the local area, each outlet needs to be equipped with 3-5 parking spaces, the monthly rental cost of each parking space was previously hyped by other timeshare rental companies to about 700 yuan, and then we negotiated in many ways, each cost is about 300 yuan, and there are some exclusive parking spaces, the price will be higher." Cui Wei revealed that although he also found some free parking spaces in the community and society at that time, the cost of parking every month needed more than 300,000 yuan.
The second is the charging cost, which is fixed to the stars every month, the charging fees of companies such as special calls have reached hundreds of thousands of yuan. The third is the cost of charging personnel and the cost of allocation, "a car charged once is about 10 yuan, basically once a day in the summer, and twice in the winter, but in order to control the cost, sometimes the car has no electricity, we would rather deploy the vehicle from other places, and then charge it centrally at night." Cui Wei told reporters that time-sharing leasing is originally an industry with very high requirements for vehicle utilization and refined management, but the biggest pain point of using electric vehicles for time-sharing leasing is that the charging convenience and endurance are not as good as fuel vehicles, so it is impossible to fundamentally improve the efficiency of use, and it is difficult to fundamentally ensure profitability.
"If it is a fuel vehicle, this profit logic can be more established." Cui Wei thinks. Fuel vehicles do not have the problem of powering up, the requirements for parking spaces are relatively low, longer cruising range, can ensure a higher frequency of use. At the same time, the depreciation cost of fuel vehicles is lower and more in line with the use habits of the public.
In addition, in terms of depreciation and vehicle residual value, the shortcomings of electric vehicles are also very obvious. "In about two years of operation, the mileage will be reduced by about 50%." Li Feng told reporters that this means that the residual value rate of operating vehicles will be very low. "When I first got the car, the price was about 50,000 or 60,000 yuan, and now it can only sell for 8,000 to 10,000 yuan."
Subsidies fuel capital mania
But why do most time-sharing leasing companies choose to use electric vehicles for investment? Many people mentioned above believe that this aspect is due to the consideration of new energy vehicle sales, "many OEMs do time-sharing leasing, including making a line, in fact, in order to sell more new energy vehicles." "Although it is difficult to make money in the operation link, under the state subsidy, these cars basically reach the subsidized kilometers and make money." Cui Wei revealed.
For example, chery eQ1, the most common model in the time-sharing rental industry, has a cruising range of 300km and a price of 59,800 yuan after subsidies. Before 2018, the state subsidy for models with a cruising range of ≥ 250km, the maximum subsidy amount reached 44,000 yuan, according to the calculation of the policy of national supplement and local supplement 1:1 at that time, the mileage of ≥ 250km models, the highest subsidy amount can reach 88,000 yuan. After the new subsidy policy in 2018, models with a cruising range between 250km and 300km can also reach a maximum of 68,000 yuan for national subsidies and subsidies. However, according to the policy requirements at that time, to apply for subsidies, it was necessary to reach a mileage of 20,000 kilometers.
"This mileage can basically be achieved in more than a year." Cui Wei cited his city as an example, basically after 8 months of "Kaesong", the mileage of these vehicles has reached 10,000 kilometers, and "subsidies will soon be available." He believes that it is driven by subsidies that car companies are generally more willing to use electric vehicles to do time-sharing leasing.
The entry of vehicle enterprises and capital into the time-sharing leasing industry can actually be traced back to July 2013, when EVCARD, founded by Shanghai International Automobile City Group and Tongji University, became The first car-sharing company in China. In February 2015, Green Dog Car Rental, which is 60% owned by BAIC BJEV, was officially launched, which is the first large-scale "time-sharing leasing" company in the industry to be invested by an automaker. In May 2015, SAIC Motor's time-sharing leasing enterprise "e Enjoy Tiankai" officially began to test the waters. In November of that year, Panda Car, a subsidiary of Lifan New Energy Automobile, was officially established. On May 20, 2016, Panda took the first step of expansion, officially launched in Hangzhou, landed in Chengdu market at the end of August, and successively opened operations in Henan and Sichuan in October. At the same time that Panda car use is gradually opening up, SAIC "e Enjoy Tiankai" also integrated with EVCARD, an electric vehicle leasing company under Shanghai International Automobile City, in June of that year, and established a joint venture with a registered capital of 200 million yuan to establish Universal Car Rental Co., Ltd. (Global Car Sharing), and then released the goal of reaching 12,000 vehicles, 4,000 outlets, about 1 million members and about 1 billion yuan in revenue in three years.
Gofun was also formally established in 2015 and entered the timeshare market, receiving strategic investment from Volkswagen Group in 2016 and a Series A financing of 214 million yuan from Chery Automobile, Volkswagen Investment and Harvest Investment in November 2017.
On August 8, 2017, the national policy of "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Healthy Development of Small and Micro Passenger Car Leasing" was officially introduced, which clearly mentioned that the development of shared cars was encouraged, and the sharing car industry ushered in the spring. At the time, strategic management consultancy Roland Berger predicted that by 2020, the number of driver's license holders in China would reach 355 million, while the number of cars would be only 195 million, and for these 160 million holders, shared cars would become the preferred travel solution. At that time, mainstream vehicle companies including BAIC, SAIC, Geely, Great Wall, Changan and other mainstream vehicle companies entered this market. According to Analysys statistics, the financing amount of the timeshare leasing industry reached 1.2 billion yuan in 2017 and 800 million yuan in 2018. According to the statistics of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, as of March 2019, the number of cars put into time-sharing leasing operations nationwide has reached 110,000-130,000. Among them, Evcard vehicles have the largest vehicle volume, about 30,000-38,000 vehicles; followed by Gofun, with a vehicle delivery of about 28,000-30,000 vehicles; and the number of cars released by Huaxia Travel, a shared brand of BAIC Group, is also more than 20,000 vehicles, becoming the top three.
Car companies and capital booms have boosted the blossoming of shared car companies. Tan Yi revealed in an interview in June 2019 that "there are more than 300 registered car-sharing companies in the country, but as of now, none of them have achieved overall profitability."
From the moment of prosperity to the collapse of the "whole staff"
Under heavy assets and heavy operation, the first batch of car time-sharing rental companies that were directly dragged down were some small and medium-sized entrepreneurial enterprises, and in 2017, Youyou Car, which was founded in March 2014, declared bankruptcy, and then companies including EZZY, Muggle Travel, car2go and other companies have stopped operating or closed down, and the players on this track have rapidly decreased.
The collapse of small players has increased the concentration of the industry, in 2017, Gofun obtained the first round of financing, began to aggressively open the city, EVCARD and Panda car has also become the head of the enterprise, but in the second half of the still fierce market competition, seeking a healthy operating model after the balance of payments has still become the most important step in this field.
Wang Wu gave reporters a review of several key development stages since the establishment of Gofun. In the early days of its establishment, Gofun's management team mainly came from within Shouqi, and its playing style was more traditional, and its operation scale was small, and it was only operated in Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen and Qingdao in the early days. The second stage is that after Tan Yi joined in 2016, he used standardized actions to open the city and carry out large-scale expansion In 2018, Gofun announced the completion of the layout of more than 50 cities across the country, and reached strategic cooperation with Sichuan Jiaotong Investment Industrial Co., Ltd. and Chengdu Transportation Investment Group Co., Ltd. to expand the travel territory. The third stage is to explore the business after obtaining financing and layout in third- and fourth-tier cities. "The scale of this stage has expanded rapidly, but operational problems have broken out and the platform has encountered bottlenecks. Subsequently, it began to lay out the franchise business and carry out a series of innovations, but the deficit was getting bigger and bigger, and the burden was getting heavier and heavier. ”
Since 2018, Gofun has announced that it has changed from pure self-operation to self-operation + franchise model. In October 2019, Tan Yi said that Gofun has covered 80 cities across the country and 40 self-operated cities, of which 25 cities have all achieved profitability, and 40 cities have joined, of which 29 have achieved profitability.
"It is impossible to make a profit from self-operation, but the franchise business is indeed profitable." Zhou Ping, a person who was once responsible for the Gofun franchise business, told reporters that for the franchise business, Shouqi only provides vehicle technology, and the purchased vehicles are provided by the franchisee, and the franchisee needs to pay the franchise fee, for Gofun, this is indeed a low investment and high return model, but when the interests of the franchisee cannot be guaranteed, the franchisee also gradually withdraws.
In October 2020, Gofun once again made strategic adjustments, announcing that the brand was upgraded to the parent brand "Gofun Technology" and two sub-brands "Gofun Travel" and "Gofun Car Service", trying to transform the technology platform integrating travel and vehicle service management. It is reported that after the brand upgrade, Gofun Travel will chase the goal of lightweight and platformization, in the form of dealers and personal vehicles into the network, to achieve rapid growth in the scale of vehicles, and plans to select 300,000 vehicles in 2021 to be put into use on the platform. At the same time, used car sales companies in Changchun, Tianjin, Shanghai and other places have also joined the Gofun technology platform system, hoping to revitalize idle car sources, increase traffic, and get more customers in stores.
At that time, Tan Yi had begun to admit the profit problem of car time-sharing leasing, he had bluntly said in an interview with the media: "Time-sharing leasing is the most difficult to do, I don't think that time-sharing leasing can be regarded as a large-scale high-speed expansion of its profits, it is a learning process, if you want to succeed, you must use a large number of C2C private cars." He also said that the convenience and flexibility of timeshare must have this state of being available, ready to return, and shared at any time.
But in fact, due to problems such as parking in big cities and charging electric vehicles, car time-sharing leasing simply cannot be used at any time and can be returned at any time like a shared bicycle. An investor who has previously led the investment in shared bicycles and participated in the investment research of shared cars told reporters that after participating in the survey, he gave up the investment in shared cars, one of the reasons is that the model is too heavy, and the other key point is that "it is impossible to use and stop like shared bicycles".
He believes that this is not a problem that a company can solve, but is determined by the allocation of resources and industry attributes of the entire society, "point-to-point time-sharing and small-scale enterprises share cars, the business model is established, but to do large-scale full coverage like online car-hailing and shared bicycles, it is impossible to establish a profit model." He said.
At the same time as the Gofun city shrank and the company's business was semi-suspended, the first financial reporter also learned that SAIC Evcard is also making strategic adjustments, guiding consumers in the direction of long-term rental and reservation of cars in the existing cities where they are doing business. In addition to the above two head enterprises, on February 1, Lifan's car time-sharing rental platform Panda Car also announced the suspension of operation after more than 5 years of official operation.
From capital competition, large-scale layout of automakers to contraction adjustment, in just 5 years, shared cars have also entered the cold winter like the shared bicycle industry. In Wang Wu's view, the decline of the sharing car industry is expected. With the layout of more and more players in the early days, the competition between industries is becoming more and more fierce, including resources, talents, business and other aspects, and because of this competition, the price of parking lot resources continues to increase, resulting in rising industry costs and declining revenues, while intensifying competition leads to the continuous expansion of the funding gap.
"The profit model on paper is easy to calculate, but considering the depreciation, maintenance, technology development, management costs, competitive relationships, etc. of the vehicle, the actual operation of the shared car can not be operated according to the ideal price and cost." Wang Wu believes that from the intensive layout of car companies and capital competition to the opening of the tide of closures, the "graveyard" of shared cars continues to appear. In his view, shared cars are likely to become the next sharing bike, from a boom to a chicken feather in just a few years.
(At the request of the interviewee, Liu Fang, Liu Liwei, Cui Wei, Li Feng, and Wang Wu are pseudonyms.) ）