Recently, many places across the country have issued warnings about the saturation of online car-hailing, and Sanya City in Hainan Province has decided to suspend the business of accepting online car-hailing business licenses and transportation licenses. Previously, the transportation department of Jinan City also issued a risk warning for the online car-hailing industry to remind employees. In the "second half" of the development of online car-hailing, what is the industry environment in Jinan? What changes have taken place in the market?
The efficiency of individual receiving orders has decreased, and one driver serves multiple "owners".
"Now the orders are not as good as before, the big orders can’t be received, and the small orders are tossed back and forth." In Jinan, Wang Xingyi has been working as an online taxi driver for four years, and he has run for more than 1,000 days from part-time to full-time. "In the first year, I worked part-time, and the number of orders was OK, especially on weekends, and I almost never stopped receiving orders." Wang Xingyi worked part-time, and the monthly flow was more than 8,000 yuan, so the second year he ran a full-time online taxi. What he didn’t expect was that with the passage of time, there were more and more Internet taxi platforms, and the number of online drivers was increasing day by day. The most obvious feeling was that the number of travel orders received was not as good as before.
At 10 am on the 11th, the reporter called a taxi from Jinan City Long-distance Bus Station through Autonavi Map, Meituan and other platforms. On the interface of the aggregation platform, there are nearly 100 taxi-hailing platforms in the economy category alone. After calling at the same time, drivers will soon take orders. "From the aggregation platform, you can see how many online taxi-hailing cars are running on the road in Jinan." Entering the car of Mr. Li, the driver of the timely car, the first thing that came into view was the three mobile phones in front of him. "Now it is not as good as before. There are too many platforms, and the passenger flow is scattered. Only one platform is attached to it, and the number of orders is not large. Multiple platforms have multiple opportunities." Mr. Li used "the east side is not bright and the west side is bright" to describe this operation method.
The phenomenon of online ride-hailing drivers docking to multiple platforms has become more common in recent years. The same car has more than one "owner" serving the same driver. By docking on multiple platforms, in addition to improving one’s order volume, it can also increase the probability of receiving large orders. "During peak periods, there are too many orders to start, which is not cost-effective and time-consuming. Sometimes it takes half an hour to block in the urban area," Mr. Li said. When multiple platform orders come in, you may encounter medium and long-distance orders to the airport or peripheral areas and counties.
Recently, a video of an online car-hailing driver’s car full of mobile phones receiving orders leaked out on the Internet. Multiple brackets were laid in the car, with eight or nine mobile phones on them, each mobile phone displaying a real-time picture of receiving orders from a platform. "In the past, there was a colleague who hung up on seven platforms at the same time, and the order came in at the same time, and it was all beeps," Mr. Li said. There is still an influx of people pouring in when the flexible market for online car-hailing is saturated
In recent years, there have been more and more drivers on online car-hailing platforms, and today, when the capacity is basically saturated, there are still many newcomers joining. "From the perspective of practitioners, the threshold for online car-hailing is low, the work is flexible, and everyone’s impression of online car-hailing drivers can earn more than 10,000 yuan a month by running around casually," Mr. Li believes.
"After the original job was sluggish, I wanted to change industries. After comprehensive consideration, I still think online car-hailing is more suitable." The reporter’s investigation found that there are not a few online car-hailing drivers who have the same opportunity as Mr. Li. The entry threshold is not high and the working method is relatively flexible, which makes online car-hailing a job option for many people.
For some young people, online car-hailing is also a "way out" for employment. "In the first year of graduation, I didn’t find my favorite job, so I thought about driving online car-hailing for a period of time, and I had a source of income. Later, I got used to it, and I have been doing it until now." Zhang Bo took running online car-hailing as his temporary job after graduating from university, which was also the fastest job he could find. "At that time, the traffic was still relatively large, so I didn’t have to worry about the list. After my college classmates at the time found out, some people also joined or worked part-time."
The fast and convenient way to call a car has made online car-hailing the first choice for many people to travel and take a taxi. The huge potential market development space at the beginning has attracted a batch of practitioners. Between the ages of 20 and 50, people in every age group are engaged in the profession of online car-hailing drivers.
"Every morning at 6 am, pick up the car and go home at 5 pm, there are no restrictions on the company’s various regulations. And in the two years when the market was good, we did make money." Zhang Bo said that in the first two years, it was very easy to take dozens of orders every day, and you could run more than 100 yuan in an hour. When you are tired, you can take a day or two off. For college students who have just left school and middle-aged people with a lot of family affairs, this relatively flexible work has a greater appeal.
In the interview, some online car-hailing drivers made a calculation to the reporter. In the first few years of the booming online car-hailing market, the average daily flow was around 800 yuan, but now the daily flow is less than 400 yuan. "After the Spring Festival, the cultural tourism market has recovered one after another, and the urban traffic counting has increased, but because there are many online car-hailing platforms and drivers, the passenger flow to their hands is not as high as expected." Mr. Jia said that some platforms have incentive mechanisms for drivers. There are rewards similar to "rushing orders" for receiving more orders. Coupled with the current decline in efficiency, many full-time online car-hailing drivers have increased their running time and saturated orders. Mr. Jia believes that the usual passenger flow is limited, there are more and more drivers, and everyone’s running time is about 10 hours a day, which has exacerbated the competition. My brother "switched to" some traditional taxis on the online car-hailing network without carrying
Jinan Urban and Rural Transportation Bureau in the network about car industry risk warning released a set of data, as of the end of March this year, Jinan registered a total of 69 network about car platform enterprises, registered network about car 17,800 vehicles, get the network about car qualification certificate driver 35,900. Affected by the network about car and the number of employees increased sharply and rapidly, according to statistical data estimates, the current network about car bicycle daily average number of orders less than 10 orders.
In recent years, the number of private cars in Jinan’s urban area has also been increasing, and the two types of vehicles are intertwined, which has a certain impact on road traffic during peak hours. Jinan City adheres to the basic idea of giving priority to the development of urban public transportation, developing taxis in a moderate and orderly manner, and optimizing the urban transportation structure for urban transportation layout. In the case of car-hailing saturation, there are still many people flooding into the market, which also diverts the flow of urban public transportation.
The reporter found that in addition to having a certain impact on urban traffic, the impact of online car-hailing on traditional cruise taxis is also very large. "In the first few years, when there were not so many platforms, online car-hailing ushered in a dividend period, and many people used it as a part-time means." The person in charge of a taxi company in Jinan told reporters that whether it is taxis or online car-hailing, it is a supplement to urban public transportation. Now residents are more inclined to ride-hailing than traditional cruise taxis, which allows online car-hailing to have a large market development space, but the space is ultimately limited. With the increase of platforms and the increase in the number of drivers, the market began to saturate.
The person in charge admitted that the online taxi-hailing industry has also attracted some traditional cruise taxi practitioners. Some taxi drivers do not renew their contracts with taxi companies after the contract expires, but choose online taxi-hailing instead. "Joining or renting a car is a more common way to recruit online car-hailing. It is more convenient for drivers to join, and the operation model is relatively flexible. In the past few years, the cruise taxi industry has lost a lot of drivers."
Jinan City’s online taxi booking industry risk warning notice also pointed out that at present, some online car-hailing platform companies are idle due to low orders, and some cruise cars are also unaccompanied due to difficulty in achieving expected returns. It is recommended that companies intending to engage in online car-hailing operations carefully research the market, gain a deeper understanding of policies, and cautiously invest in Jinan’s online car-hailing market to avoid economic losses.
