Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On the afternoon of January 16, DiDi posted a message on its official Weibo that DiDi resumed new user registration after a comprehensive rectification and agreement with the relevant departments. During this period, Didi experienced delisting and huge penalties, while the entire ride-hailing market has undergone drastic changes.

As one of the iconic events on the Internet, Didi's punishment has affected many businesses, such as Orange Heart Optimum, a weak community e-commerce business, which was shut down in March last year. Core business sectors, such as online car-hailing, customized ride-hailing, finance and bike rental, are mostly limited to focus on stock users because of restrictions in the main business.

During the offline period of the "DiDi" application, the ride-hailing market has experienced two rounds of military expansion. First, after Didi was removed from the shelves, the two aggregation platforms of Gaode and Meituan and the travel platforms with the background of car companies such as T3 Travel started a subsidy war to attract users and drivers. Last year, Gao de launched its own brand Rocket Travel, while Huawei and Tencent tried to share market share with the help of terminals and maps.

However, combining a number of data, it can be found that in the two rounds of battles launched by the chasers, Didi still maintains an advantage in terms of market share, which has fallen from 90% to 70%. In Shanghai, for example, 85% in the second quarter of 2021 fell to 62.25% in the third quarter of 2022 last year, Didi lost 20% of its market share, and the average daily volume fell from 1 million to 730,000.

Didi has been able to retain most of its market share for two reasons. Before going offline, Didi has accumulated a large number of users, and various services have also cultivated the stickiness between users and drivers. On the other hand, as the key to the export service of the platform, Didi has not seen a large-scale loss of drivers in the past 563 days, relying on leasing contracts and mature operations. The competitors behind become mediocre because of the lack of sustainability of subsidies, lack of operational capacity and lack of effective means to maintain stability.

Today, the ride-hailing market has said goodbye to fanaticism and tends to calm down, which means that the competition has also changed from a short-term one-off game to a long-term multi-round game.

The old king is still the king, although Didi is still the absolute leader of the ride-hailing market, but for it, the damage caused by the 563-day "lockdown" is still incalculable.

The first to bear the brunt is the loss of users. Since Didi App was removed from the shelves, the ride-hailing market has entered the "post-Didi era". Giants such as Gao de and Meituan marched on a large scale, while a number of ride-hailing platforms followed, trying to "take advantage of the deficiency" to dominate the ride-hailing market.

Among them, the aggregation platform, represented by Gao de, simultaneously provides traffic portals for multiple ride-hailing platforms to connect users, thus rapidly rolling out business in the mode of light assets, while waist-rear ride-hailing platforms such as Sunshine and pommel horses focus more on vehicle operation and driver management, while marketing and getting customers are more completed by the aggregation platform. " "Killer" entered one after another, and the game of carving up Didi was also launched.

On the passenger side, due to the removal of Didi App from the shelves during the "lockdown period", new user registration was suspended, and Didi's customer access path was inevitably cut off. Even if the ride-hailing market has already entered the stock competition, but considering the replacement and replacement of original users, as well as the rising demand of the new generation of users, the situation of Didi is actually not optimistic.

In addition to the natural inflow of new users, various platforms are also trying to compete for the stock users that originally belonged to Didi. To this end, it did not hesitate to spend money on subsidies, and even once rolled down the average price of online car-hailing and stabbed Didi. The moat of the online ride-hailing industry is relatively shallow, because passengers are generally more sensitive to prices, coupled with the weak platform account system, lack of precipitation, the user migration cost is much lower than other Internet platforms.

In other words, in the online car-hailing track, who has a low order price and takes orders quickly will be more likely to get the favor of users. Take the once-popular Hua Xiao Pig, whose essence is the product nurtured by Didi to circumvent its own heavy system.

However, at that time, the ride-hailing track was surrounded by heroes, and Didi itself did not lift the ban and make a profit. Even if Didi, as a leader, could bring the hourly wage of drivers and vehicle wear to the extreme, it could not stand the "attrition war" of successive subsidies on various platforms. In the context of the loss of channels for new users and the gradual "evaporation" of old users, the number of orders of Didi can not escape the decline.

The logic of all the players occupying the driver side is the same as that of the passenger side. As soon as Didi was "locked up", Gaode launched the "summer commission-free season", and specially provided the first three commission-free benefits for new drivers for a week. According to a ride-hailing driver, the subsidies given by various platforms at that time were particularly high, and when he traveled on his T3, the reward for driving every day was even higher than the income of sports cars.

Fortunately, based on platform points, contracts and other factors, the online ride-hailing platform is much more tied to drivers than users-even if players increase driver subsidies, they are more likely to be new drivers, and the damage to Didi's driver base camp is limited in the short term. Unexpectedly, by the time the ban was lifted, Didi had been "locked up" for 563 days, which had already exceeded the scope of "short-term".

In the process, the number of Didi orders continued to decline. In February last year, media reported that Didi's share of the ride-hailing market had fallen from nearly 90% to about 70%. When Photon Planet investigated the ride-hailing market at the end of last year, a former Didi driver admitted that the volume of Didi could no longer compete with Gaode in Chengdu.

In other words, even if the driver-side service of the online ride-hailing platform does not match Didi, the loss of confidence caused by long-term detention and the decline in orders visible to the naked eye still put Didi in the dilemma of driver outflow.

In addition, the logic of the ride-hailing track has also quietly changed in these 563 days.

In the past, the logic of online car-hailing lies more in that private cars earn extra money from part-time sports cars, but with the spread of online car-hailing compliance, the decline in the price of superimposed orders leads to the failure of fuel cars to make money, and a considerable number of part-time drivers gradually leave the market. some of the remaining drivers quietly changed trams to save costs, while others rented cars directly and became "workers" of the platform. The logical evolution towards "taxi"-the binding relationship between the ride-hailing platform and the driver has deepened again.

Based on this, the real test for Didi, which has lifted the ban, is yet to come.

Internal friction track, dilapidated players now Didi, has resumed the registration of new users, but so far has not been restored to the shelves. In view of the current situation, the full lifting of the ban is just around the corner, but the ride-hailing industry is no longer as brilliant as it used to be.

In 2022, the subsidy war among all players finally calmed down, and "internal friction" became a new key word: after the Didi window period, platform subsidies gradually shrunk, and more of the cost of courting users was passed on to drivers. In this context, more and more drivers are dissatisfied with the declining income and orders and choose to leave the industry-the car rental company's parking lot has become a "online car-hailing graveyard".

At a time when the ride-hailing market is in a mess, Didi, which returns to the track, has an innate advantage.

Compared with the waist-tail ride-hailing platform, the operating capacity of Didi drivers is a bit higher. Take short-driving compensation as an example, the small platform either takes the initiative to screen it out, or sets a threshold to selectively ignore the driver's complaint. By contrast, Didi appears to be much more formal in such details related to the rights and interests of drivers. In addition, Didi, which does everything itself, can directly end the game and reconcile the contradiction between users and drivers.

Based on this, Didi will return and most likely will exchange attacks and defenses with players who have shared its cake-reassembling the disappointed ride-hailing drivers so as to increase the capacity to pry open the market.

However, the bugle of counterattack is not so easy to blow. Just like the situation when Didi was a "city keeper", drivers may not be willing to leave the existing platform because of sunk costs; drivers have contracts and hinder their return. After all, no one is willing to bear deposits and handling fees as high as thousands of yuan. Therefore, even if Didi has mental advantages in the context of drivers, it is not realistic for drivers to return in bulk in a short period of time.

563 days ago, drivers moved away from other platforms; 563 days later, Didi just gave it a return option.

Even if Didi can return to the battlefield and accept a group of drivers, it will still not be able to reverse the structural problems of the ride-hailing industry-passengers want to spend less, drivers want to make more money, and if neither side of the platform wants to offend and stick to it until the end, they have no choice but to burn their own money. But the question is how much money does Didi still have to burn? Can it burn better than other players?

After all, during the period of Didi lockdown, strong players such as Huawei, Tencent and bytes have emerged in the industry. In July last year, Huawei began mass testing of "Petal travel" to its members, offering aggregate travel services in Beijing, Shenzhen and other cities; in the same month, Tencent tested the taxi-hailing function in Wechat's "travel service"; and at the end of last year, media revealed that Douyin had opened the qualification of platform service providers for transportation and travel services.

At present, although the players have not yet formed a mass, but they have adopted the Gaode aggregation taxi-hailing path, which means that once they make efforts, the business will be rolled out quickly. Based on this, the return of Didi, may also set off a new round of subsidy war, after all, before the industry dust settles, will never stop in the fierce competition.

In the long run, the traditional ride-hailing market is also facing the impact of robotaxi, this "Damocles blade" will not fall immediately, but sooner or later.

Since last year, by the policy spring breeze and technical iteration, mushroom couplet, enjoy the road, Xiaopeng and other robotaxi players, ready to move. On the whole, the commercialization of robotaxi is beginning to show signs, and the operation in some areas is gradually normalized.

As of the third quarter of last year, the order volume of "radish fast" reached 474000 in a single quarter. With the domestic multi-city open unmanned travel service pilot, radish fast run in January 11 won the Wuhan market, obviously will continue to "expand the city." Mushroom car couplet won a total of 10 billion orders in 2022, and the project was landed in Beijing, Hunan, Henan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Hubei.

In addition, Hengdao robotaxi completed 100000 unmanned travel services last year, Xiaopeng previously announced that it will launch mass-produced vehicles to the market this year and next, and the future ride-hailing market will be expected to be "replaced" for a long time. Compared with the traditional online ride-hailing, there is no driver-side game in robotaxi, and the platform can focus on user services. In addition, there will be more advantages in terms of cost and operational efficiency.

Didi needs to start a business for the second time. This is yesterday's fault, just like a dream.

After more than a year of confinement, Didi not only has to face the fact that the traditional ride-hailing does not make money, but also has to readjust other lines of business. Last year Orange Heart preferred to go offline, which means that Didi's idea of spending a lot of money to open up a second curve of local service has failed, and Didi will be confined to the field of travel for a long time in the future.

The user market faced by Didi, which is back online, is 60% of the users who have formed a habit, but may vote for someone else at any time. In order to win over this group, Didi is improving its membership system, from simple divergence of price concessions to travel services. A year ago, Didi launched a ride-hailing priority dispatch service for black gold members, which is a typical case. For users lost as a result of replacement, considering that Didi is unlikely to restart the subsidy war just after rectification, it is only possible to snowball with its own mass and service advantages.

The change in the client side is not a problem that can be solved in a day or two, but the driver side leaves Didi more room to operate.

In 563 days, there is no longer a clear distinction between ride-hailing and taxi because of their double license and income. instead of discussing the return of Didi drivers, we should pay more attention to the flow of ride-hailing drivers to the taxi market.

On the other hand, in order to meet the challenge of robotaxi, Didi has previously formed three self-driving teams to intervene in the self-driving business. However, whether Didi Wonya, an affiliated company that focuses on self-driving, or the internal D1 and C1 projects, have been hit by the removal of the application from the shelves. For example, the previous project in Huadu District of Guangzhou has been affected, and there has been no further news.

Given that self-driving does not generate positive cash flow in the short term, and Didi needs more time to recover than any of its peers, there will be huge variables in the self-driving business. In short, whether ride-hailing or self-driving, Didi needs to find a way to make money as solid as a travel service, as promising as self-driving, and as profitable as a financial business.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: photon Planet (ID:TMTweb). Author: Wu Xianzhi Wen Jiehao

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