Features
31 mai 18

Wake up and smell the tea: China sets the pace in New Mobility

“Only 1 in 1,000 vehicles is in real leasing. The real lease potential is just 25,000 cars. True leasing is really complicated,” is how Yves Helven introduced Markus Collet, partner at Corporate Value Associates. He had the honour of closing the APAC expert meeting at this year’s Global Fleet Conference in Rome.

Putting things in perspective with his presentation entitled “Leveraging fleet efficiency via technology and mobility, dealing with urbanism and mobility management in China,” he highlighted the mind-blowing rate at which China is evolving. “The urbanisation is huge: there are 14 cities with a population of over 10 million, 75 cities that have 5 to 10 million inhabitants, and 214 cities with a population of between 1 and 5 million.”

Forget about Europe

To get people around in such tremendously densely populated areas, the Chinese government invests heavily in public transport infrastructure, but ride hailing is also evolving fast. “Mobility is entirely different than in Europe. There are also less objections to data usage and autonomous cars, for instance, while new technology is adopted fast ad legislation can change overnight,” Mr Collet explained.

“China has a large number of mobility models: P2P ride sharing, P2P car rental, taxi, periodic car rental, bike sharing, ride hailing, and so on. Interestingly, there are also multi-model offers, from bike sharing to railway and airplane, provided by Didi and Alipay, for instance.”

The spear tip for new mobility

China will be the spear tip for new mobility in the world, according to Mr Collet. “New mobility thrives in environments which are concentrated, willing to adopt, connected and strictly guided. That is why the mobility evolution in China will be fast, massive and disruptive.”

Fleet operators have a huge potential with regard to managing fleets of ride hailing companies, he concluded. One major challenge remains, though: “China evolves so fast that every time we look at it, it is different.”

Authored by: Dieter Quartier