At present, online ride-hailing in my country is mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, while the penetration rate in third- and fourth-tier cities is relatively small. In the future, as various online ride-hailing companies expand their presence in third- and fourth-tier cities, and as consumption levels increase and promote consumption upgrades, demand in third- and fourth-tier cities will still grow significantly.

At this stage, online ride-hailing is mainly based on the C2C operation model of private car franchise. However, judging from the overall compliance trend of online ride-hailing, Didi Chuxing and Meituan Taxi-hailing adopt a C2C model, which is an asset-light operating model. However, emerging online ride-hailing platforms such as Shouqi Car Hailing, Caocao Private Car, and Xiangdao Travel adopt a B2C model.

Online ride-hailing companies provide compliant online ride-hailing vehicles to reduce drivers’ operating costs and risks, thus standardizing the entire online ride-hailing operation order. However, the B2C model is an asset-heavy operation, which will undoubtedly increase the operating costs of online ride-hailing platforms. If economies of scale cannot be achieved through market expansion in the future, this asset-heavy operation model will face greater risks.

Extended reading - "Online ride-hailing car jumping" incident in Hangzhou:

On June 12, Ms. Gao from Hangzhou took a Shouqi ride-hailing car. On the way, she thought the driver was trying to Chatted with her and changed route twice. The more Ms. Gao thought about it, the more she became afraid and chose to jump out of the car, resulting in a fracture of her left arm.

According to media reports, after the incident was exposed, in the face of online doubts, Shouqi Ride-hailing responded on June 19 that the driver and vehicle had relevant certificates, and the driver chose a newly opened and unplanned ride-hailing service. Go straight on the new road on the navigation route and informed Ms. Gao to choose the new road. Before Ms. Gao jumped out of the car, the recording did not show any sign of an argument between the two parties or that she ordered the driver to stop.

On June 20, Ms. Gao issued another statement on Weibo, saying that after she opened the car door, there was a buzzer in the car but the driver still did not stop, and that Shouqi’s description of the ride-hailing situation was inconsistent with the facts. Five points are not met.

It is understood that in the statement, Ms. Gao said that she has been asking for it but has not seen the audio and video so far. Finally, she hopes that the Shouqi platform will handle the uploading of the entire video and audio recording comprehensively and without editing.