Car companies enter the network on a large scale, and a new round of war will be launched.

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The three state-owned automobile companies FAW, Dongfeng and Changan formally signed a mobile travel intention agreement in July to determine the integration of the three-party superior resources and joint venture to form a T3 travel service company. GM has also established a network car platform, but it is used to provide driverless services. In addition to time-share leasing, SAIC has been advancing its network car business, Geely has not said that it has already declared war with "Cao Cao special car."

As a leading company in the domestic network car business, Didi has defeated and swallowed fast, Uber China and other competitors, and became the darling of the capital market. However, the OEMs did not agree with this. "The previous platform competition was too homogenous, and the data overlap was very high. The previous network car market was not a mess." A domestic car company is responsible for sharing the travel business in Shanghai. When chatting with the author, the person said that the involvement of the car companies will set off a new round of network car wars.

There must be a battle

In the United States, Uber, Lyft, China's Didi taxis and other shared travel service providers started their business with the network car service, and with a large number of users from the service end of the industry chain, began to customize models to the car companies, research and development of automatic driving and other new technologies, Try to grasp more of the right to speak.

On the other road, car companies are reluctant to sit still and start “re-starting business” in the field of travel, time-sharing, and network-related vehicles. For now, it seems that the network will be the market for the next stage of their entry.

In the field of big travel, cars are changing from purchased assets to a service consumer goods. The current one-time consumption will be converted into high-frequency usage scenarios, product attributes will continue to decrease, and service attributes will become higher and higher. Roland Berger's survey shows that more and more passengers are expecting a unique experience. In other words, the OEM must shift its attention from the driver to the passenger.

It is not difficult to infer that the two sides will meet on the custom-made network car. The final travel platform and the car enterprise will have a battle. The car enterprise will launch a network car and directly hit the main business of Drip.

Car companies have already started. According to Peter Schwarzenbauer, a director of the BMW Group, ReachNow in the US market covers all aspects of shared travel, including traditional car rental, internet car, car sharing and P2P sharing. That is to say, BMW has already laid out in the field of network car, and wants to share a piece of it.

At present, the domestic car companies do the network car business is quite radical and direct should be Geely, its Cao Cao special car is a brand specializing in new energy network car service. As of the end of April, the platform has 12 million registered users, entering Shanghai in May, Shanghai became its ninth city in 2018, and is also the 24th city in the country. SAIC is gaining momentum.

Of course, there are also car companies to hold the group to warm. In May 2018, Ford Intelligent Travel Co., Ltd. and Zotye Automobile signed a memorandum of cooperation to set up a joint venture company in Zhejiang to conduct business for the network car market.

Marcy Klevorn, executive vice president and president of mobile travel for Ford Motor Company, said, "The new smart travel joint venture will provide intelligent electric vehicles for China's online car market and is committed to becoming an important part of China's smart city solutions."

Recently, the official announcement that FAW, Dongfeng and Changan will jointly create a travel platform, relying on the customized production of vehicle manufacturing, the future car platform owned by the car companies will have a better ride and travel experience, and there is much to do in the travel market.

It is now raining.

Can cooperation last for a long time?

Some people will ask, the strength of the car enterprise is to build a car, there are users, the two sides cooperate, the advantages complement each other, isn't it perfect?

There are indeed some car companies that choose to work with the travel platform. On June 13, 2018, Singapore's online car platform Grab announced that Toyota will invest $1 billion in it to deepen the cooperation between the two parties. As early as 2017, Toyota has invested in this company.

Before the Beijing Auto Show this year, Didi established the Hongliu Alliance, but everyone knows how deep the cooperation can be, and it depends on the negotiations between the two sides.

Its cooperation with the public has progressed relatively quickly. “At present, we have plans to further deepen cooperation with Didi, which has been initially approved by our Supervisory Board.” Professor Heizman, President and CEO of Volkswagen Group (China), told the author that in the negotiation with Didi Volkswagen does not only provide vehicles for Didi, but explores more possibilities to provide more and better mobile travel solutions for future drivers and customers.

The public will not hang on a tree and want to "walk on two legs." At the end of 2016, Volkswagen set up Moia, a mobile travel service company in Berlin, Germany. This year's Geneva Motor Show, the brand displayed a six-seat MPV model dedicated to shared travel, between the network car and the bus, perhaps should be seen It is a small public travel tool that can be reserved online. Of course, this is still in the scope of the network car, but has not yet officially operated.

However, the cooperation process between traditional car companies and travel service providers will not be smooth. Whoever leads the cooperation is expected to be the focus of debate, especially in the later stage of data sharing, the trouble will not be less. The establishment of a 50-50 joint venture company is only a slow-moving plan, and ultimately there must be a role to play.

In the case of GM and Lyft, GM invested US$500 million in the US online car platform Lyft in January 2016, holding about 9%. The two sides plan to cooperate in the field of automatic driving. But recently General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the relationship is not close. GM still makes financial investments in Lyft, but has not launched any cooperation projects. General Motors President Dan Ammann also left Lyft. Board of Directors.

Although the two sides have not penetrated the specific reasons for “breaking up”, in the face of the hundreds of millions of markets in which unmanned driving will be shared in the future, whether the cooperation between strong car companies and strong travel platforms can be deep and continuous is a question mark.

Controlling the car is a heavy asset, can the drip work?

Cooperation is not easy, or return to competition. Net car is also a commercial company in competition, but lacks real barriers. Now it is nothing more than "people, money, things."

Who is cheap to use. The first is passengers, and user loyalty is low. The US group took a taxi into Shanghai and had a lot of discounts. In 3 days, it grabbed 30% of the region's share. From the side, it can see the lack of user loyalty. The author also used the US group just in Shanghai, because it is really cheap.

Who will give more money to help. There is another type of person who is a driver. Although the late US group exposed the shortcomings of the lack of management of the taxi team, the 20% of the drip was quite dissatisfied. In the future, car companies will be hired with high salaries, and their management will be guaranteed. The attraction is not small.

More money is more likely to survive. Even if the value of the first half of the year is 60 billion, it is still a startup company, and it needs to consider making profits and making money. However, when the car companies start to come, they really want to pay for the travel of the car, which is really rich.

Regarding things, I have to say that building a car is a matter of learning. This seems to be the strength of the car company, manufacturing, but the drip has a huge amount of user demand and experience feedback, more understanding of consumers, it is true that the combination of the two is better, but also analyzed before, strong car companies and strong The strong alliance of the platform is difficult to last.

However, the two attributives are all "strong". You can see the opportunity of Didi, that is, cooperate with the weak platform, and through a joint venture, shareholding or even mergers and acquisitions, win a car company to produce a customized car that meets the user experience. It will be the way to break the drops. Now the cooperation with the car and home is still too small.

But then again, buying a car is not in line with the thinking of Didi Light Assets. If Cheng Wei is willing to give weight to Drip, how to manage assets afterwards will be another new topic.

If you don't spend your time on custom vehicles, the car companies will enter the network car business on a large scale, and Drip may really face its biggest challenge.