Production | Tiger Sniff Business Group

Author | Li Ling

On January 16th, exactly one week away from the Spring Festival, Didi used an open day to explain why the driver ’s registration pause button was pressed when the Spring Festival was heading and capacity was running low.

Previously on January 3, Didi announced that it will suspend the review of new driver registration nationwide from January 9th to January 16th. During the suspension period, new drivers can still submit registration information, but the platform’s review will resume from 00:00 on January 16.

“After the previous year, for Didi last year, it was absolutely a hundred meters rubbing directly on the face from the top, colleagues still stick to their posts, at least still working.” Didi Chuxing President Liu Qing called 2019 “a year of didi troughs” , and she also revealed that in the whole year of 2019, Didi.com had approximately 10 billion passengers and taxis to transport passengers, and 140 million on behalf of drivers. Car owners go home.

Yang Jun, the deputy general manager of Xiaoju Vehicle Service, told Tiger Sniff that among Didi’s capacity, the overall capacity growth in 2019 is indeed very slow, but the growth data of car rental is fast. Didi maintains a relatively stable capacity, and a large part of its kinetic energy comes from car rental. The disputes similar to Yan Bao’s show the most difficult way to obtain new capacity for online car rental-it is difficult to control the model of renting and purchasing cars.

Although Didi spent the cost of suspending the review of new drivers and stagnating the new capacity of the entire platform for one week, the online ride-hailing platform must add a lesson on how to make the compliance capacity acquisition channels more standardized and reasonable.

Information black box is difficult to eradicate

Purchasing a car in installments and using it on your own, and buying a car in installments are just a little bit different. For people who buy a car, it is essentially no different. For people who don’t have enough money to buy a car, but want to make a living by car online, renting and purchasing is undoubtedly a good way. But This kind of more mature model that has existed in the traditional automobile field for decades, it has been repeatedly frustrated when it moved to the field of online ride-hailing.

Purchasing by rent in the field of online car rental means that users buy cars through a third-party rental platform and obtain operating licenses to become compliant drivers. In this process, the driver needs to pay the down payment according to the price of the rental platform, and the subsequent fees are paid in installments, which is essentially a method of renting / purchasing the car in installments.

Compared to the car purchase form such as car consumer loans, the down payment of renting and purchasing is relatively flexible, the loan information is less reviewed, and the loan is faster, so it has become the preferred method for drivers with insufficient funds to enter the online car rental.

But during the installment process, the driver and the car are in a lease relationship. Once the repayment is interrupted, the rental company has the right to take back the car. The vehicle can be transferred to the driver only if the payment is made on time to the agreed deadline.

“Purchasing by rent is a very common way to buy a car by yourself. However, the driver of the online rental car is mainly to make money by receiving orders.” said Chen Ting, general manager of Xiaocheng Motorsport. Purchasing drivers enter the platform because of the risks and hidden dangers they may bring.

False information for purchasing by rent

The risk of purchasing by rent mainly exists between the leasing company and the driver. In reality, there are mainly the following situations:

The first is to collect various unknown fees, such as the application fee;

The second is a yin and yang contract. In order to pass the platform review, let the driver sign two contracts with different contents;

The third is to falsely bundle platform revenue with vehicles, sell vehicles higher than the market price to drivers, assure them that they can pass the audit, and reach a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan, causing drivers to buy high-interest loan vehicles. Section pressure.

For online ride-hailing platforms, capacity is critical, as is compliance with capacity. On December 29, 2019, Yan Bao, the founder of Shanxi Good Car Easy, took an attempt to commit suicide, revealing that the network ride-hailing capacity is beyond the imagination of ordinary people. The platform requires the company ’s compliance capacity, but compliance capacity may also be carried With false promises and high loans by leasing companies.

Although Xiaocheng has completely suspended the use of “rental purchasing” vehicles to enter the platform in 2019, and has continued to crack down on yin and yang contracts and arbitrary charges, the platform is only a cooperative relationship with third-party rental platforms.However, the means available for the above phenomena are limited, and they can only be started from the aspects of risk warning and admission process.

On November 28, 2019, Didi announced that Xiaocheng Vehicle Service has set up car rental delivery centers in Hangzhou, Chengdu, Qingdao and other cities, and tried to use this method to control the driver’s vehicles in a reasonable and regular way. However, the delivery center did not change the nature of the contract signed between the driver and the leasing company, but merely transferred the “last ring” of the delivery vehicle to the control of the platform.

The driver himself went to the Didi Delivery Center, and the platform staff explained and reconfirmed the rules, rents, lease methods, risks, etc. of the rental contract to the driver to avoid misunderstanding or being cheated. For drivers with particularly high interest rates, Didi will even provide legal support.

Li Nan, the person in charge of Xiaoju car rental platform governance, revealed that Taking Hangzhou as an example, the proportion of yin and yang contracts has been reduced to less than 1% through the delivery center. But despite this, there are still drivers who enter the platform through black goods that are purchased through rent. Currently Didi has completely banned the entry of car rental drivers in the form of renting and purchasing.

The paradox of buying better than renting

However, the frequent problem of renting and purchasing is actually an indispensable source of new capacity.

From 2018 to 2020, the number of taxi drivers who have been hired by Didi.com will increase from over 90,000 to over 500,000. Yang Jun told Tiger Sniff that among the Didi capacity, the overall capacity growth in 2019 is indeed very slow, but the capacity derived from car rental is growing rapidly.

It can be said that during the low period of Didi, a relatively stable transportation capacity is maintained, and a large part of the kinetic energy comes from car rental.

There are two types of online car rental through car rental: business car rental and purchasing car rental. Under normal circumstances, operating car rentals are higher, and drivers ’income is limited, so monthly rents are lower, and the vehicle ultimately belongs to its own model of renting and purchasing, which is more popular with drivers.

At the same time, rent-based purchasing is more prone to disputes.

Online taxi drivers rent their cars to earn money from orders. Driver income fluctuates according to the off-peak season. Taking the West Lake Scenic Area as an example, the number of calls in the off-season is 48% lower than the peak season. However, the rent-purchasing contract is usually signed for 3 years, and each period is a fixed amount. This instability makes it easier for online-booking drivers who rent-purchase to bury hidden dangers.

Some drivers can no longer engage in the online car rental industry due to sudden changes in their homes, and require a refund of the car deposit. Some drivers do not know that there are obvious off-peak seasons for online car rentals, and it is difficult to pay the repayment when the income declines during the off-season. Check back.

These situations are essentially inconsistent with the driver ’s expectations and the actual situation. According to the terms of the contract, the driver will waive the down payment when he regrets it.

As far as drivers are concerned, buying a car is a considerable investment. The down payment for rent and purchase and liquidated damages will bring a small economic loss to a family. For leasing companies, each vehicle is also burdened with a very high capital cost and operating cost. Once the driver interrupts the supply and returns the car, it will affect the operation of the leasing company.

In addition, there are a variety of factors that affect Didi driver income differences, such as urban consumption levels, low and peak seasons, online hours, word of mouth / service points, and driver order habit.

“The top-ranked driver and the bottom-ranked driver in a city can have a difference of 1.5 times in hourly turnover. Excellent hard-working drivers on the platform can earn more than 10,000 monthly running income.” Xiao Shuangsheng, general manager of the platform driver service department, also admitted that not all drivers can earn more than 10,000 yuan per month.

Yang Jun announced at the scene that he would replace the “rental purchase” model of car rental— The driver rented out the fixed rental period for one month and notified the rental company 15 days in advance to return the car without obligation.

Also, during the registration review process for Didi.com drivers who restarted on January 16, drivers will see rental and loan risk warnings before registration, and can submit lease and loan contracts according to their actual conditions.

In order to prevent some drivers from using cheaters or changing the order receiving city to bypass the entry barriers of the local city, when the driver switches the order receiving city, Didi will strictly implement age, driving age, vehicle type, license plate, etc. Admission check to ensure compliance with registered city requirements. At the same time, the driver’s dispatch rules were updated to keep the starting or ending point consistent with the driver’s registration place.

At the scene, a representative of a rental company raised three questions about the delivery center. Insufficient parking spaces, long appointment times and low efficiency. “After all, it’s money every day!”

A driver representative asked directly, “Special car rental plus various costs, 10,000 yuan per month, can the cost be lowered?” “Can the special car have social security, and online taxi drivers are freelance, we I ca n’t pay social security myself. “

This is the second time Tiger Sniff has heard this question from a driver representative during an open day with drivers.

The difficulty in paying social security is that the driver group is wide and the willingness to pay social security cannot be unified. And the current relationship between the driver and the platform is only a cooperative relationship, not an employment relationship. In this case, to pay social security, we must first pass the policy.

Today, the capacity of online car rental has become the core of competition. Leasing compliance vehicles is undoubtedly a way to meet the regulatory requirements and supplement the capacity of online car rental platform. It is unknown at this time how flexible the leaseback plan is, but Didi’s state of continuously seeking medicine to solve transportation problems and optimize the driver’s security system is likely to continue for a long time.