Hidden business conspiracy behind Didi car rental?

After experiencing the great sadness and joy of the online New Deal and Uber's door-to-door, the people who eat melons are saddened by Didi's future, and Cheng Wei ignored the accusation of monopoly and bet on the asset-oriented car rental business in countless possible choices, which can be described as unexpected and reasonable.

Didi has been keen on hand-to-hand combat since its birth, but Cheng Wei, who calls himself a "pragmatic war history lover", is still used to the bombing in RTS games, or in the words of Ceng Ming, chief of staff of Ali Group, "massive capital intensive bombing". Therefore, the Didi car rental business, which was put into trial operation in Shanghai on August 7, still relies on Verdun or Somme-style play, and there is no time to learn from Rommel or guderian for quick push.

Sudden trial operation

The Didi car rental project, which is under the responsibility of the No.1 car team, has been secretly developed for some time. When I say suddenly, I mean that Didi pays more attention to the rapid increase of high-frequency products, but is not very interested in the car rental business that relies on the underlying resources and deep operational capabilities. However, the New Deal eliminated the gray area and forced Didi's business model to become heavier.

The initial test users of Didi Car Rental came from SMS invitations, and the screening rules were based on big data or heavy users. Since I am lucky enough to be the first batch of "Super Exploration Yoga" of Didi, it is natural to do some research on this business.

The most intuitive feeling is that the whole product experience is "eaten alive". This has two meanings. First, the basic rules are copied from the system of China and Hi-Tech, such as illegal handling, basic insurance and no deductible. If you rent a car, you will be familiar with it. It's a typical takenism.

The front-end experience is completely a replica of Didi Express. The advantage of this is that the underlying structure is shared, the development risk is not high, and users get started quickly, but after all, it is a fast-moving product with many slots.

It is said that most of Didi's car sources are obtained from small and medium-sized leasing companies in Shanghai by annual rent. Buick GL rents about 5500 yuan in August. Strangely, there are still very few Shanghai cars that can be rented. The reason why self-operated cars are not used on a large scale is naturally to control costs, which also shows that this business is still in the exploratory stage.

Didi has no stores in Shanghai, only a few vehicle distribution points relying on parking lots. It is delivered to the door just to make the process all online and avoid the disadvantages of offline, but in the long run, the possibility of "going out" of the airport and high-speed rail is still great.

The order adopts the dual inventory of drivers and vehicles. When the system is overloaded, it will refuse to take orders. Didi integrates all lease contracts and car inspection links into the APP, uploads photos of vehicle appearance damage, and learns the P2P car rental process. As for subsidies, there are still many. Rent 98 yuan's order, plus an equal coupon, and pay the basic insurance premium in 40 yuan, which is equivalent to full exemption. Unfortunately, the settlement link is not optimized well.

Specifically, this model is the contradiction between experience and risk control.

Didi used Sesame Credit's real-name authentication+face recognition in the registration process, but this is only the first-level risk control. In the orthodox car rental industry, most of them use the pre-authorization of the commercial banking system instead of the deposit to control car rental fraud. At this point, Didi had to compromise. Because there is no physical store, it is impossible for POS machines to get pre-authorization, and the Notice on Risk Events of Bank Card Pre-authorization No.79 (20 14) of the central bank strictly controls the illegal movement of POS machines, so Didi has to support the deposit of savings card and Alipay balance in addition to introducing ant flower buds, mainly because the pre-authorization of vehicle foundation is as high as 3,000 yuan, and most users of flower buds may not have enough quota. However, as a result of the compromise, the settlement system is fragmented, new customers are easily trapped, and the deposit is charged according to normal transactions. Didi's move not only has spillover risk, but also is equivalent to extra cost.

Of course, all this can't be simply attributed to the carelessness of the product manager, but reflects the unique courage of Didi's product strategy, no matter the depth.

Why rent a car?

The biggest strategic consideration for Cheng Wei to enter the car rental market should be that the new policy of online car rental has improved the entry threshold for vehicles. The personal idle resources that Didi can use are being accelerated by the policy, and he has to rely more on the support of car rental companies with stronger bargaining power. This will inevitably lead to the contraction of the main business scale and push up the cost at the same time, and it is difficult to achieve the optimal match between the cost and efficiency of sharing economy. Therefore, Didi needs a new format to create enough GMV to stabilize the company's valuation, survive the policy shock period and consolidate cooperation with car rental companies. In addition to the original eight product lines, only renting a car can provide enough incremental space.

In fact, harvesting user dividends by taking advantage of traffic portals has always been an effective means of product innovation, and it is also a common practice that consumes up to 9 rounds of financing and brings imagination to the capital market.

The strategy is established, but tactically, the sword goes sideways.

There are only two car rental formats in the world: First, Hertz, Enterprise and Avis-budget adhere to the B2C model of CAR Inc and Ehi Car Rental which has been developed in China for hundreds of years; The other is 20 1 1 P2P car rental created by GetAround in the United States on the basis of sharing economy.

Didi didn't take either and walked out of a compromise route.

First of all, it correctly estimates the shortcomings of P2P car rental, that is, the platform does not participate in offline operation at all, which leads to out-of-control service experience, and excessive accommodation to car owners leads to too many zombie car, which affects the platform matching efficiency. Didi effectively controls the source of the car through the whole lease, and at the same time, as an exception, it takes the service under the pipeline, which shows that Didi has a clear understanding of the difficulty of car rental business and hopes to take advantage of the advantages of the two modes.

Didi's biggest challenge is that it is not a blue ocean, but a mature market that has been fully competitive. There is no closed old system that relies on policies to survive like the taxi industry. Short rent's existing self-driving business is controlled by CAR Inc, with a share of 365,438+0.5% in 2065,438+04, and 8.5% in car rental on Yi Bei listed in the United States. Market-educated users pay more attention to the ability to provide stable and reliable services and brands.

Advantages and disadvantages of Didi

In the previous publicity, Didi emphasized the provision of "full online intelligent car rental service". "Compared with other market participants, Didi Car Rental is committed to becoming an experience-driven and technology-driven shared self-driving platform". This shows that Didi is fully aware of the shortage of resources and systems and deliberately focuses on the sense of technology and online experience, but this is just a public relations technique. The real advantage of Didi is actually nothing more than two points:

1, flow

Nearly 300 million users are Didi's biggest capital, and users from all business lines have always been the strength of Didi's product development. However, it is still worth observing how high the overlap between these users and the car rental business is and whether it can play a synergistic effect. Didi was solidified in the image of low-cost service by early publicity, which killed the possibility of turning to high-end by improving offline experience to some extent.

2. Allowance

Transferring subsidies from other product lines to support new business is also an old routine of Didi, but choosing to start renting a car at this time is not an impulse to race around, but to find a stable fulcrum of valuation in a rapidly changing market environment, so although subsidies come first, it may not be the norm.

As for the shortcomings and uncertainties of Didi car rental, there are also many.

First of all, although the penetration rate of China mobile travel market is very low, it is difficult for Didi to improve on this basis, but it can only compete for the existing customer base, which is in the hands of big car rental companies, which exposes the bottleneck of Didi's resource allocation model.

Didi can hardly cooperate with large leasing companies and can only attract scattered small leasing companies. The channel efficiency is not high, and the control of the vehicle source is limited. Yitai car rental, which was rumored to have invested too fast, intends to cooperate with Didi. The facts are suspicious. Didi is probably to obtain license resources, but Yitai is a listed company in the United States and has its own door-to-door business. Why do you want to be a long-term rental channel for Didi?

Secondly, the current routine of Didi Renting Car is equivalent to a super wholesaler, splitting long-term rental bills into scattered short rent bills to make money. This cost model is strange. Although Didi saves the cost of buying a car, it bears the long-term lease cost including depreciation and the reasonable profit rate of the contracting and leasing company. How is it possible to make a profit through short rent, which may be subsidized?

In terms of cost structure, the centralized collection of vehicles in Shenzhou and Yihai has more price advantages. In addition, the commercial closed loop of used car disposal has been consolidated for many years. In the current competitive environment, even if Didi reached the level of 172 yuan in the second quarter of this year, or reached the level of 155 yuan last year, it would be difficult to achieve positive EBITDA.

Compared with Shenzhou and Yizhi, another shortcoming of Didi is its offline operation ability.

Didi has trained more than 50 drivers in rotation in Shanghai to support the car delivery service. However, in order to maintain professional standards for a long time, there is no other way but to recruit a large number of full-time drivers or rely on outsourcing to drive companies.

The biggest advantage of outsourcing drivers is that they can call when they come, and the biggest disadvantage is that they are unfamiliar with the business, which easily leads to the disconnection of the whole service experience. Didi faces the most difficult choice. In addition, vehicles need to form a distribution center in a specific area to improve the operational efficiency under the car delivery mode, and Didi is also difficult to determine the configuration and scheduling of vehicles without stores.

Of course, the biggest danger is risk control.

As mentioned earlier, the risk control of Didi car rental almost depends entirely on Ant Financial. In order to solve the problem of insufficient flower beds, it is necessary to supplement them with margin, which is not enough to fundamentally stabilize the risks. The experience of P2P car rental proves that the biggest loophole of this model lies in the inconsistency between the platform and the owner. In short, for P2P car rental, the car belongs to the owner, and for Didi, the car belongs to the leasing company. Therefore, in the event of a risk, P2P company and Didi are not the owners of the vehicle, so they can't claim compensation on their behalf. They only apply the civil dispute handling procedure and do not constitute a criminal case.

Car owners and rental companies have lost their cars, and they have to fight civil lawsuits with swindlers. What kind of brain hole is this?

In any case, the impact of Didi car rental is objective. The so-called fire at the city gate has affected the fish in the pool. The most likely victim of this thunderous fire is the dying P2P car rental. The latter has never been favored by capital, but it is struggling under the three mountains of new formats such as regulatory authorities, orthodox car rental companies and Didi. I'm afraid it's doomed this time.

The strict restriction of P2P car rental to take care of the interests of car owners leads to the closed and unequal information, which not only raises the transaction cost, but also drags down the demand matching rate and response rate. In fact, it disintegrates the matching mechanism of platforms and often challenges some of the most basic ideas of the sharing economy. Although the blood has passed for some time, the aura of innovation has long faded.

If Didi renting a car is not impulsive, then its contest with Shenzhou and Yihai may be protracted. Of course, the final result does not depend on the simple price factor, but who can maintain the operational efficiency in the optimal cost structure, provide high-quality services continuously and stably, create value for users in the process, and continuously improve the travel ecology of China.

The future variable is whether Didi will turn to the construction of its own fleet. Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages. The self-operated fleet can quickly take advantage of the traffic entrance to consolidate the offline experience, but the capital consumption is huge, which is also a burden for Didi, which has not yet been IPO and has suffered serious losses. In this sense, Didi is unlikely to launch a large-scale car rental price war, so it is too early to predict how much impact Didi will bring to the whole market.

Didi on the tuyere has its own business destiny. Almost subconsciously, I entered a completely strange market. It's a bit like "Guardians of the Galaxy", teasing little bear and Shu Ren Grut, "Pretending to sleep when you are in danger and bubbling when you have money". This is a business instinct for enterprises in unpredictable markets.