The article is from the public number: Liu Yanfeiyu (ID: liufeinotes) , the title picture comes from: Visual China.

The content of this article comes from a private communication with friends.

After the incident last year, the compliance process has accelerated, and compliance processes have become more stringent in various regions. We discussed the future changes in the offline car rental industry and the possibility of an aggregation platform.

Many people have seen the impact of security incidents and compliance on ordinary people, but they haven’t seen the impact on the ecology of online car rental. I tried to interpret it from my own understanding, and it may be inspirational to you.

Some points to talk about:

  • What exactly does compliance mean?


  • What is the impact of compliance on the ride-hailing industry?


  • What will happen in the future? Is it self-employed or aggregated?

    The content is relatively dry, you can click “Before watching” before continuing.

    This article represents personal opinions and is not relevant to Didi. The sources of information are public information, and the rest are extrapolated by individuals, not involving confidential information.

    Part 1 What exactly does compliance mean?

    What is compliance?

    Compliance is simply “government approval”, commonly known as the three certificates:

    • “Internet Reservation Taxi Business License”

      • “Internet Reservation Taxi Driver’s License”

        • 《Internet Reservation Taxi Car Transport Certificate》

          In the industry, they are:

          • Platform ID

            • Witness card

              • Vehicle ID

                What is a platform certificate?

                According to the “Interim Measures for the Management of Online Appointed Taxi Operating Services” issued by the seven ministries and commissions at the end of 16th, the platform certificate is accepted by the prefecture-level government transportation department where the company is registered. Netizen, the People’s Bank of China and other departments reviewed and determined the issuance.

                In other words, to obtain a platform license, it must be approved by the local government, not the central government. In the industry, there are also distinctions between “big cards” and “small cards.” Big cards are certificates issued by the central government. However, with this certificate, it is still not possible to conduct business in various parts of the country, but also to get it in each prefecture-level city. Credentials.

                In other words, if Didi has already established operations in 300 prefecture-level cities, then it must face 300 prefecture-level city governments and apply separately for true compliance operations. Otherwise, it would be “Beijing Company to do Off-site business “is not compliant.

                Didi of platform licenses are not always the earliest. The main requirement is that the rules are strict and there must be local branches, legal entities, etc. Some local governments, due to the rules of some special scenes, will be more friendly to the local ride-hailing platform, and it will be easier to get a permit.

                Taking Anhui as an example, as of the end of last year, the platform for online ride-hailing that got the platform license. Photo source: The first public car booking network

                What is a witness?

                Human identification application process

                A witness is a series of audits that a driver must pass, including a test. Essentially it is not much different from the teacher qualification certificate and the accounting qualification certificate.

                The cost of a witness is not too high for a driver of a ride. It is mainly the time and energy cost of recitation and examination.

                In terms of backslash review (such as criminal records) , Didi ’s original review standards are stricter than government requirements, so they are not Will cause higher costs.

                The witness has only one special threshold, which is that the hukou requirements in some cities will be more stringent.

                What is a car license??

                Passport Application Process

                The car license is similar to a witness, but it requires government review. Seemingly simple, there are several essential effects:

                • A car with a license will be transferred to a business vehicle

                  • How many licenses are issued to be controlled

                    • Automotive review requirements will change

                      The transfer of a vehicle with a vehicle license to a commercial vehicle raises the barrier for entry for drivers. Projects like the part-time driver I participated in before, have been forced to die in this environment- No part-time will be willing to turn the car into operation .

                      Even a full-time driver, turning a car into operation means a shorter scrap cycle than a private car (8 years or 600,000 kilometers) , and Higher insurance costs.

                      How many vehicle licenses are issued is subject to control, which means that the city’s online car rental operations are strictly controlled, and the online car rental platform cannot increase or decrease by itself.

                      Automotive review requirements will also need to be updated, and there may be cases where vehicle requirements become higher. This usually has little effect in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities.span class = “text-remarks” label = “Remarks”> (Because the original price is higher, the model can be better) In many second- and third-tier cities and towns, drivers will need to change cars. Either higher costs make driver income lower (pricing is unchanged) , or higher costs make higher prices for ride-hailing (Driver income is reasonable) .

                      So, which card will be the bottleneck of the online car platform?

                      Speaking one by one.

                      The core difficulty of the platform certificate lies in the ability of toG co-construction . The ride-hailing platform needs to work with local governments to build a set of rules. (supply and demand conditions, urban traffic conditions, public transportation conditions, etc.) in different scenarios, , the requirements for online car rental will be different. Vehicle management is also a new topic, and management methods for the taxi industry cannot be fully reused, which will cause difficulties.

                      To meet the requirements of hundreds of urban scenes, it is a big issue for a platform such as Didi.

                      The core difficulties of witnesses are twofold.

                      One is the exam. It can be divided into several problems: driver learning and training, which requires professional question bank tools and even offline training institutions; driver test traffic, in some places, the test room is compact, and the test traffic is too slow; the difficulty of the test bank, most cities directly Using the standards of the taxi industry, there are many unreasonable things. (For example, you also need to evaluate the city’s geography, and all online taxi drivers will use navigation tools.) .

                      Urban Transportation Questions in the 2018 Beijing Online Carpooling Exam. I knelt in this part for the first time in the mock test.

                      One of the most perverted questions I have encountered is this. You feel it:

                      But these are mostly efficiency issues and time cost issues. On the basis of collaborative optimization with the government, it is ultimately solvable. For example, Didi is pushing Beijing’s relevant departments to remove urban transportation problems.

                      In a word, Most local governments will not directly limit the number of witnesses, because the number of vehicle licenses is the basis of capacity control.

                      The second difficulty is that some city IDs have hukou restrictions, that is, Beijing and Shanghai have strict requirements for local hukou, which almost screens out most potential drivers. However, this is a regional problem that is rarely encountered outside of first-tier cities.

                      Car licenses also bring two difficulties: the cost of drivers becomes higher, which increases operating costs; and the limited number of licenses makes it difficult for the market-oriented operation of online car rental.

                      The former is easy to understand, the key is the latter. Imagine two scenarios: a city is developing rapidly, the demand is increasing, but the transportation capacity is insufficient, the licenses are strictly limited, and the supply cannot be achieved; in a competitive environment in a city, the competitors get 1/3 of the license plates, no matter If you do the best in other areas, (calling experience, service experience …) , you will always only have 2/3 market share .

                      So, From a macro perspective, the bottleneck will be: vehicle license> platform license> personal certificate . (This may vary in some cities.)

                      Part 2 What is the impact of compliance on the ride-hailing industry?

                      Some impacts have just been mentioned briefly, so let’s summarize them here.

                      We will focus more on government relations.

                      Not much to say about this.

                      We will focus more on cooperation at bottlenecks.

                      The bottlenecks vary from city to city. In some cities where it is difficult to obtain a vehicle license, Didi may have to communicate with the CP of a compliant vehicle (Car Partner, rental company with vehicles) cooperation; in some cities where it is difficult to obtain witnesses, cooperation with certain DP (Driver Partner, rental company with driver) . Sometimes it may even be necessary to consider acquiring or leasing certain local companies to fulfill compliance requirements.

                      Rising operating costs and higher probability pricing.

                      Supply reduction is the first result.

                      As mentioned earlier, compliance will increase driver costs. (mainly vehicle licenses) , which directly reduces the supply; At the same time, part-time drivers are difficult to enter under the requirements of compliance; in addition, many local governments will limit the number of online bookings according to circumstances. (For example, from a government perspective, you should not encourage ride-hailing when continuous congestion, but instead encourage public transportation. This is a multi-faceted perspective, which does not mean who is right and who is wrong.) will also cause Supply decreases.

                      The increase in platform operating costs is the second result. Mainly due to the higher operating costs of full-time compliance capacity (coming up next) ; some requirements for compliance (such as registering a company locally) will also bring costs.

                      In the end, the overall cost of the online ride-hailing operation will increase, and there is a high probability that pricing will increase.

                      Control changes to driver services.

                      Control and control driver services, from traffic distribution to manual management

                      Under the situation of supply and demand balance, drivers can operate in a similar way to “Taobao merchants”. Good service = more traffic. For example, use the evaluation system, service scores (good behavior plus points, bad behavior points, directly affect the weight of the order) and other operating systems to control drivers Of behavior, which is lower cost.

                      After compliance, supply will fall short of demand in many cities, and it will continue for a long time. In this case, the evaluation system and service points are invalidated. (even the worst drivers can also receive orders) . To control the services of drivers, we can only do “heavy”, such as hiring a large number of driver managers, team captains, and so on.

                      Part III What will happen in the future? Is it self-employed or aggregated?

                      With the above basic knowledge laid down, let’s take a look at the future situation of online car rental.

                      First, my point: The future will still be a “one super + no strong” or “two super + no strong” situation . To put it bluntly, Didi is still in the absolute first position of solid market share. Whether the US group is willing to work hard on travel determines whether it can occupy 20-40% of the market share and become the second super.

                      What about Gaode? First answer the question of the taxi aggregation platform.

                      Gold’s aggregate taxis cleverly cater to the user’s psychology and make users feel “fast”, which is the category of cognitive errors in behavioral economics. It seems that there are many platforms that are “faster”, but in reality, from the perspective of capacity provision, Didi is still an overwhelming proportion. That is to say, if someday Didi decides to withdraw from (currently access is said to be investor pressure) , The survival of Gaode convergence depends on whether the capacity of other platforms is sufficient.

                      So, is there room for other platforms?

                      This brings us back to Didi ’s barriers. My thinking and conclusion on this question is: Didi’s threshold for entry is the biggest barrier. ToC (including driver) The existence of scale effects can improve the experience , ToB (Internal Operation Efficiency) also has a scale effect to reduce costs.

                      For example, half of the drivers in the city are in Didi and half are in the US Mission. If the scale is halved, the passenger experience will be greatly damaged. (Even if the taxi is aggregated in Gaode. Since transportation capacity is not shared, independent dispatch will lead to increased waste.)

                      The result is that there is almost no long-tail market for ride-hailing in a single city. Imagine that if you are an online car rental platform, there are only a few hundred cars and thousands of users in the city, and it is almost impossible to operate normally. (unless you do Supply-demand toB business like hotels) .

                      A rough estimate is that at least 20% of the market size in a city is sufficient to support the normal operation of a ride-hailing platform. Even if this threshold is reached, compared with Didi, the cost of each order is relatively high. It may not be 80% / 20% = 4 times, it is likely to be 10 times, or even 40 times. This is due to the advantages brought by the two aspects of scale just mentioned: the network effect brought by the high density of the company can increase the dispatch efficiency index; the marginal operating costs shared in a single city are reduced. remarks “label =” Remarks “> (marginal costs across cities can be high) .

                      Didi used to have 200+ competitors across the country. The reason why it is not worried is that Didi has a stable market share and has a high threshold. It is generally accepted that the high threshold of WeChat is the high transfer cost, which is actually the same for Didi. The network effect has made many passenger drivers experience poor on the new platform. There is only one way to achieve large-scale migration: throw money.

                      And Didi ’s worries about Meituan also stem from this:Mission is rich.

                      To defeat WeChat, user migration is a national movement and misson impossible. Unlike WeChat, travel can be promoted in units of cities. Of course, the cost is also astronomical, but it may not be completed. It didn’t take long for Meituan to drop 300 million in Shanghai. Those 200+ competitors didn’t dare to think about it. The 30% of the market size that was hit was enough to support business operations. Not to mention that Meituan also has excellent product operation capabilities. In terms of marginal cost control, there is even sharing of group purchase, wine travel and takeaway.

                      So, only Meituan can threaten Didi. However, in each city, huge sums of money are spent to obtain these market shares. From a commercial point of view, it is only Meituan who can figure it out. My personal guess is that under the pressure of financial reports after listing, the US delegation will be more restrained, I am afraid that it will not grab this share.

                      Except for Meituan, there are almost no opportunities for other platforms. Except during the compliance transition, there are some bonus platforms.

                      For example, a car manufacturer or a government-supported platform will continue to exist in many places in conjunction with the issue of obtaining licenses mentioned above. In this way, Gaode’s aggregation platform will still exist in the short to medium term.

                      However, this bonus period is not permanent and sustainable. Most of the online ride-hailing platforms supported by auto manufacturers fail to break even in terms of market size or achieve cost-effective operating costs. In the long run, in addition to the top-ranked figures such as Shouqi and Cao Cao who have the chance to survive ( As mentioned earlier, it is difficult to expand their cities ) , others are difficult.

                      News reports, drivers who enjoyed road trips need to be apprehended by SAIC employees

                      The above is my point of view: the future will still be “one super + not strong” or “two super + not strong” situation.

                      Part IV Is it possible for underlying aggregation?

                      Gao De is a C-call aggregation. Will Didi be a capacity aggregation platform due to compliance pressure or policy pressure? Does it work with others to get a license plate?

                      Start talking. Let me talk about several ways of aggregation, the lower the lower the lower the level.

                      The first layer is an aggregation platform for ride-hailing services like Gaode. This is certainly doable without much explanation.

                      The second layer is a capacity aggregation platform.

                      For example, when calling a car on an aggregation platform such as Gaode, you can directly choose to assign a driver to each platform. (In the current mode, Gaode only assigns orders to the platform, which driver is a black box.)

                      But this is almost impossible. The ride-hailing platform will not completely give the decision-making power of which driver to the aggregation platform, so it will become a pure labor service company.

                      In addition, the logic of dispatching is usually linked to the driver management system. , Either that all platforms use the same management system (impossible) , or decouple the two (also impossible) .

                      At the same time, it is technically extremely difficult to handle the capacity dispatch system for multiple platforms in real time.

                      There is also another possibility of this layer of aggregation, that is not to aggregate the capacity of the car-hailing company, but the capacity of the leasing company that has no brand demand:

                      That is, Didi commissions leasing companies to assist in recruiting, managing and operating drivers. Able to solve the problem just said: unified dispatch decision and management system.

                      But the paradox is that if the driver management system is completely the same, why should Didi outsource part of the driver’s business? On the one hand, there are external uncontrollable risks, and on the other hand, the efficiency of collaboration is far worse than self-employment. This is unnecessary.

                      There is only one possibility that must be cooperated in this: the leasing company has the uncertain (or can be done at a lower cost) / Car / license plate. (In the past, the cooperation between Didi and leasing companies was mostly for the purpose of recruiting drivers and acquiring vehicles.the Lord. )

                      This is the bottom three layers.

                      These three layers are not so much aggregation as cooperation in the form of acquisition, lease, commission, etc. Is the solution in special space-time conditions.

                      For example, in a city in the Northeast, Didi ’s platform license is too late to be obtained, and the driver cannot be docked. As a result, a small platform A quickly obtained 1,000 vehicle licenses. (Actually, A does not even intend to do the actual online car rental business) . When Didi’s platform license is taken down, the number of car licenses in the city is low, you need to cooperate with A, or try to request to transfer the 1,000 car licenses for a fee.

                      For another example, in a city in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, under the new regulations, a large number of vehicles did not meet the requirements, and a large number of new vehicles were purchased. At this time, a rental company B with a car manufacturer background has an existing fleet on hand, Didi has to consider working directly with B.

                      It can be seen that such a dividend space clearly exists briefly during the transition period. In the long run, unless there is continued rent-seeking space in the background of compliance (It is also unlikely) , the car-sharing platform is not particularly needed. This kind of “aggregation”.

                      In addition to the question just now, will there be CPs and DPs? (The online car platform needs their people / cars / license plates) Requirements Cooperation in the form of capacity aggregation? It seems unlikely. If the compliance bonus is anchored, it is more convenient to quickly cooperate to cash out the transport vehicle or person in the short term, and no long-term cooperation is needed; From the perspective of the online car platform, “capacity outsourcing” is not realistic , just mentioned.

                      Finally, there are still voices in the industrySo, if it is outsourced with the idea of ​​”shaking pot”? For example, Didi docking with leasing company C, when a safety accident or a dispute between the driver and the driver occurs, it is just fine to tell the leasing company that it is their driver.

                      This is too naive. In this case, as long as Baidu outsources the sales team, it can solve the problem of Putian advertising. Anyway, if there is an accident, you can dump the pot …

                      From the perspective of real safety and experience, because they are fundamental, Didi needs self-support even more.

                      To sum up, I have the following four points:

                      • Unless a giant such as Meituan enters, the market will still be “one super + not strong” Situation

                        • The taxi aggregation platform will not be affected in the short to medium term, but the long-term survival space is also worrying.

                          • The aggregation of transportation capacity is difficult to achieve; the arbitrage of people and cars in the background of compliance will be very Brief

                            • In the above situation, there are short-term dividends, but it is unlikely that symbiosis will occur in the long-term ecology. Giants

                              I hope to help you.

                              The article is from the public number: 刘 言 飞 语 (ID: liufeinotes) . < / p>