Auto sharing business
There are car manufacturers tapping the timeshare business in China, including BMW AG, Daimler AG and Toyota Motor, all of which have been running car-sharing projects worldwide including on the Chinese mainland, with individual fleets of several hundreds of vehicles.
BMW launched its innovative ChargeNow service in China last year as the first step to extend BMW Group's Mobility Service in China. Daimler started car2share projects from 2014 providing Smart Fortwo fleets to partner companies.
New-energy carmaker BYD Motors announced in March it is starting a new-energy car timeshare rental business through a joint venture with Didi, a car-hailing platform.
Domestic carmaker Chery Automobile Co has been working with Internet car service platform Yongche Inc and telematics company Pateo Corp on joint venture Yiqitaixing from February 2014. They are building fully electric smart cars for a sharing service, and set to release the model this year.
Yang predicted: "The carmakers receive feedback from the big data collected by the car-sharing platform to produce vehicles tailored for sharing purpose from scratch.
"Take the CD player as an example. We have already found there's almost no customer use of CD players. Without it, a carmaker may save thousands of yuan in manufacturing costs, and lower the final price."
BCG's research found the majority of Chinese consumers will not forgo car ownership despite using more and more car services, especially in second-tier cities and smaller townships and counties. The residents there still treat private vehicles as a symbol of social status, and the company predicted little influence on new car sales with a 1 percent deduction in sales growth in 2021.
Nielson summarized that 67.8 percent of respondents who do not own cars "feel there's no need for a private car."
Moreover, 32.4 percent of private cars owners surveyed said they wouldn't buy another car and 9.7 percent were considering selling their cars, according to Nielson.
