Network car industry "Rashomon": drivers don't make money, and the platform is crying. Where did the money go? -

As a new professional network, car drivers have become one of the employment choices of many young people in society. Flexibility, freedom and relaxation are the labels of this profession. You can always see tens of thousands of income screenshots on various recruitment websites and news. Under the temptation of high income, these fresh blood keep pouring into this industry.

However, for the old drivers of online car rides, only they can understand that behind those so-called high incomes, there are more or less unbearable faces, mainly reflected in interests.

The problem of profit distribution between drivers and platforms is nothing new. The driver thinks that the platform is drawn high and hopes that the platform will drop. However, the platform said that it does not make money and has been losing money. It is said that the platform does not need money to do business. Since the driver doesn't make money and the platform says it doesn't make money, who makes the money?

I believe that in the eyes of many people, the online car platform should be very profitable. How can it lose money? After all, the platform doesn't need to do anything at all, just send the passenger's demand to the driver's mobile phone, thus fixing an order, and the cost is really not high. But the platform has to take 20%-40% of the driver's running water, which is really profitable. Some drivers even think it's robbery. The platform obviously didn't do anything and took so much money. If it wasn't a robbery, what was it?

Then the online car platform said that it lost money. Where did the money go?

Let's take Didi for example. The loss of Didi is that it wants to keep growing. Users who use express trains want to enjoy themselves; With exclusive users, Didi hopes that they will use the car; Users who can't get a taxi once a month hope to get a taxi once a week; Users who only take a taxi once under special circumstances hope to take a taxi first.

On the driver's side, if many users need to take taxis and there are no drivers nearby, Didi needs to subsidize drivers to run when there is demand but there is no car. Users are rarely willing to pay the dispatch fee. If they can't get a taxi, they may not take a taxi again. In order to have a good user experience, Didi has to subsidize drivers.

This is what we call income redistribution. Didi's 25% commission is equivalent to tax. After receiving it, it will subsidize the areas with less car network and train enough drivers, which is equivalent to building roads in inaccessible places.

Therefore, whether Didi is profitable depends mainly on whether income can cover the cost of maintaining growth, that is, marketing and subsidy costs. If you don't want to grow any more, and the shrinking business scale is acceptable, then Didi will have made a profit according to the commission of 25%.

Back to the topic that drivers don't make money, why do many novice drivers feel that they don't make money? In fact, the reason is very simple. Newcomers entering the online car rental industry generally choose to rent a car. Renting a car requires a deposit and rent. At the beginning of the online car rental industry, the deposit and rental cost of a newcomer is generally around10.5 million. However, because these new drivers do not understand the rules and do not have the skills to take orders, it is difficult to run out of high water in the first few months. Drivers who can't persist will choose to give up and deduct the deposit when returning the car.

And those old drivers also feel that they don't make money. I think there may be three reasons:

1. The demand for taxis in the city itself is not great, or it is saturated. For example, in many third-and fourth-tier cities in China, the total population of a city is one million, but there are tens of thousands of employees because of the low threshold. In this case, it is inevitable that you can't run away from the car for more than one time. Ask some drivers in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen if they can run for hundreds of hours a day.

2. Part-time sports cars, or fishing for three days and drying the net for two days, these drivers generally have irregular driving time and have not studied the rules of the platform in depth. This kind of driver will be judged as a part-time driver by the platform, not a high-quality main driver of the platform, and it is difficult to run out of high water;

3. There are some problems in the business model or the sharing ratio of platforms, such as carpooling tickets and preferential tickets criticized by many drivers. Although such orders meet the passengers' demand for low-priced taxis and reduce the vacancy rate of some drivers, for those experienced old drivers, they would rather run empty than take such orders;

Of course, every driver will have his own understanding of whether online sports cars make money. With the continuous development of the car networking industry, the future industry will gradually enter a standardized and healthy management. In the long run, only by safeguarding the rights and interests of workers and promoting a win-win situation among passengers, drivers and platforms, can the road of online car rental be more stable, farther and longer, so that workers can really get back their hard-earned money and support their families, and they can have passion and head start.