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With more and more demand for online ride-hailing, Geely, which already owns Cao Cao, is planning to launch a higher-end travel service, named Mercedes-Benz Yaoxing, which will be officially launched at the end of 2019, with Hangzhou as the first online city.

It is understood that since February last year, Geely Group bought 9.69 percent of Daimler's shares for about US $9 billion, making it Daimler's largest shareholder. In October of the same year, Geely and Daimler announced that they would set up a joint venture in China to provide high-end chauffeured car travel services. Until May this year, Geely Technology Group, a subsidiary of Geely Holdings, and Daimler's mobile services company formally formed a joint venture, Weixing Technology Co., Ltd., with a total investment of 1.7 billion yuan, each holding 50 per cent.

The soon-to-be-launched new brand Mercedes-Benz Yaoxing can provide passengers with more high-end travel services, and the initial models will use luxury models such as the S-Class, E-Class and V-Class of the Mercedes-Benz brand. in the future, Mercedes-Maybach and Geely's high-end pure electric models will also be introduced. At present, the official website and APP are doing the final testing before launching.

At present, the travel market can be said to be a "hundreds of billions of cake". Data show that China's on-demand travel market (including ride-hailing) is worth more than $15 billion in 2017. This figure is expected to grow at an annual rate of 33 per cent over the next few years to $201 billion in 2025 and $656 billion by 2030. As of June this year, the number of online taxi users in China reached 346 million, a growth rate of 20.8% over 2017. But it has long been carved up by all kinds of players, and it is even more difficult for newcomers to break out.

It is not the first time to launch a high-end ride-hailing service with targeted services. as early as December 2018, a total of 200 BMWs with two main models were launched in Chengdu, launching BMW's high-end ride-hailing service for real-time travel. All the models are BMW 5-series models, and the travel price starts at 140 yuan. At the same time when BMW traveled, the Audi chauffeured car built by Audi Travel also entered Chengdu. Its on-line model is the A6L of the same level as the BMW 5-Series, and it has adopted the strategy of co-operation with SAIC to promote to the market.

On March 28 this year, Didi luxury car business, known as "the most expensive ride-hailing", was launched in Hangzhou. It is said that luxury car-hailing can receive five or six transactions a day, with water flowing nearly 10,000 yuan a week. The reason why it is called a luxury online car-hailing car is basically a medium-to-high-end car with a price of 500,000 to 600,000, and the price is of course also high.

According to the same mileage price of Didi luxury car is about 4 times that of express car and 2 times that of chauffeured car, and the same mileage price of BMW is 4 times that of Li Orange chauffeured car. And luxury car online car-hailing basically have a minimum consumption, the general luxury car is 98 yuan, Mercedes-Benz business car needs 118 yuan.

Since it is called high-end service, it is to avoid direct competition with public travel and taxis, and take the route of quality and differentiation. Therefore, luxury ride-hailing is mainly aimed at business people, or a small number of white-collar users, including some rarer users who occasionally taste fresh and satisfy their vanity. For those who really have the ability, they can already afford to buy luxury cars. as for to use online ride-hailing every day, after all, luxury ride-hailing feels like a gimmick, and there are very few customers who will ride.

According to the current China Premier car and SAIC car booking for middle and high-end travel, the 2018 performance report shows that Shenzhou excellent car's business income in 2018 was about 5.949 billion yuan, down 39.65% from the same period last year, of which China Special car accounted for 58.18%. Revenue fell 38.93% to 3.461 billion yuan compared with the same period last year. China's explanation for the nearly 40% decline in professional performance is due to the reduction in the scale of compliance and rectification and fierce competition in the industry.

On the other hand, because the cost of car-hailing is too high to make money, it has announced that it will change its business strategy and encourage self-operated drivers to switch to leasing contracts, so as to reduce the operating costs of their own vehicles and drivers. in addition, for joining drivers and vehicles, first Auto car-hailing will also adjust the commission ratio, up to 25%.

According to Master Song, a luxury car ride-hailing driver, the average daily order is no more than 2. Obviously, this performance will not make BMW's travel business profitable in the near future.

After all, like BMW's APP, it really makes people shudder to spend 160yuan on a journey of just over 10km. If you are calling a comfortable model in Didi Li Orange chauffeured car, the price for the whole journey is only 40 yuan. Of course, BMW ride-hailing offers a series of customizable options and relatively perfect services, but one more penny of goods also means one more penny.

Although the domestic demand for ride-hailing will be increasing, of course, with the launch of more car companies, the competition will become more and more fierce, but online car-hailing is mass consumption rather than high-end consumption. For Geely and Daimler to launch high-end service network car-hailing may not be high-end, Geely hopes to launch a higher-end, using Maybach as a ride-hailing, also means that the group will be rarer users. But how many of these markets are there?

It is worth mentioning that Geely and Daimler's travel cooperation layout is not limited to the ground. In October, Volocopter, a joint venture between Geely and Daimler, successfully launched its first public manned flight in Singapore, which will meet the travel needs of future large cities.

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