Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
Ridesharing in China.
A paid version of hitchhiking is on the rise, but so is the chaos.
With conflicts brewing between drivers and passengers, let's dig into why they're clashing and what needs to change.
And could chef GPT in kitchen cook up your next favorite meal?
We take a look at the future of recipe creation.
Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm He Young. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Li Yi in the studio.
First on today's show, ridesharing in China or shu feng shu in Chinese.
Available through ride -hailing platforms such as DD and Hello Chuxing can be seen as a paid digital version of hitchhiking, where drivers offer rides to passengers traveling along the same route.
Unlike traditional hitchhiking, this service is organized through apps, allowing users to pre -arrange rides and split travel costs.
As the ridesharing option continues to grow on these car hailing apps, so do the complaints.
With the market expected to hit 75 .8 billion yuan or 10 .8 billion US dollars by 2026, many users are voicing concerns about disorganization and conflict between drivers and passengers.
Li Yi, please help us to explain this online ridesharing service in a little bit more detail.
It is a pretty common feature used by a ton of people every day, right?
It's a pretty common feature and also I have been, you know, used this ridesharing services for several times and also my husband has been taking on, you know, ridesharing orders as a driver.
So I happen to know something about this.
So for example, if you used the major rideshailing platform here in China, if you are a passenger, the way you get a ridesharing is, well, just like regular rideshailing services.
You just, you know, write down your departure time and also your arriving destination and also the system will ask you the earliest departure time and also the latest departure time, so whether or not you want to wait for the driver for a while and then the system would also ask you whether you want
to share the empty seat if you got this ridesharing services.
And then, you know, based on different options, you can just publish your route and then the driver can pick up your order or you can also invite drivers that share pretty much similar routes to take on your orders and the prices will be different based on your options, distance, and also the number of passengers.
But in theory, well, commonly to say that the price for this ridesharing service is cheaper than regular car heading service.
For example, if it's about a 40 kilometers ride, for this ridesharing service, if you are willing to share this empty seat with other passenger then that will be about 55 yuan.
That's about 8 US dollars.
And if you decide, no, I don't really want to share the empty seat, that will be 65 yuan.
While if you take in a regular car hailing service or quiet tour, that's about 90 yuan.
If it's taxi, that's about 130 yuan.
So you can see this way cheaper than the regular taxi and like 50 percent off.
Isn't it? It's a little bit more time consuming, I assume, because you have to fill in different boxes as opposed to the regular ride hailing where you just click where you want to go and then they come almost immediately.
It's also a little bit different as Lee explained in the sense that you offer a window where you say, if you pick me up between this time and this time it's going to be okay.
If you wait longer, I'm curious to know, do you get a further discount if you say I can wait a little bit more?
No, I don't think that's the option.
Basically it offers a more casual environment for driver and passenger.
So both of you acknowledge that this is more like a shared service.
That is not a very so -called professional service.
So that's why you will be willing to wait for the driver or the passenger.
Got it. But it does get cheaper, right?
With each additional passenger, if one person joins you, it gets a little bit cheaper.
If a second person joins you, meaning a third person in total, it gets even cheaper.
Yes, exactly. Yeah, internationally very similar services offered abroad.
Uber and some other ride hailing companies, for example, Uber has Uber pool in London, that's what they call it there.
They have some cities in Europe and in Australia and it allows passengers traveling along similar routes to share a ride, split the fare.
So Uber offers it and Lyft offers it as well.
Have you heard of Lyft before?
Only in Western reports.
Yep, exactly. L -Y -F -T.
They have something called Lyft Shared and these are very similar services comparable to ride sharing here in China, although they're only available in select cities worldwide.
But not all ride hailing platforms globally provide this option, only some of them do.
Yes, and also I think it's kind of important to note that here in China this ride sharing feature is widely known and a lot of people use it, but it still remains a sliver of the car hailing business.
Car hailing apps in this country provide so many different types of services aside from the regular car hailing, which most people would know.
Aside from this one the ride sharing literally and also the terms could be a little bit confusing for people because I see in English reports they call Uber or DD, the services, ride sharing services.
But in fact if you want to get technical they're ride hailing services and what we're talking about here with the shu and feng shu they're literally ride sharing.
Yeah, in America they have it as well.
Uber has it as well and I went to the Uber website just to see how they described it.
It's called Uber X Share and it says I'll read to you this is what it says.
Open up the Uber app and enter your destination in the where to box once you confirm that your pick once you confirm your pickup and destination addressed are correct select share and then tap confirm share the app will try to match your car with other riders heading your way get up to 20 % off if you're
matched with a co -rider.
So it's basically the similar kind of thing, similar thing that we have here in China.
Yes, and in China alongside these things we also have designated drivers.
This is when somebody has had alcohol and can't drive your own car home and then you can book a designated driver on the app to drive your car home.
So this is one service out of the many that these apps can make a ton of money from, I suppose.
So initially folks really liked this green shared and cheaper car transportation model and it seems to be a market that continues to grow.
So what are the benefits to that?
Well I think the benefits as we discussed is a greener way of transportation.
So you know according to I checked the official description of this red sharing or hitch surveys of DD Choo Sing, so according to its official app it really defines this red sharing as a win -win service for both drivers and passengers.
So you know the platform really defines this service as something that can both offer convenience and benefits for drivers and passengers.
So I would say a major benefit for both drivers and the passenger would be cost saving.
So for passengers it's obviously cheaper than the regular ride -hailing service and also taking a taxi.
And meantime for drivers especially for a lot of drivers are taking up this right sharing service or business their mindset would be it's very good way to offset their travel expenses.
For example their gasoline and also even for the bridge and highway tolls which I think we can discuss about it later.
Rules about this you know sharing this highway tolls can be very different from the regular car hailing services because the platform actually encourages passengers and drivers to share this highway tolls.
It's not really you know regulate which side to take this fee.
So which also caused a little bit controversy or debate about this regulation I guess.
You mentioned the growth in the market though and it really is.
Let's take a look at some numbers.
The penetration rate of ride sharing option services it's gradually increasing.
There was a report from a research firm called Frost and Sullivan and in that report it revealed that the penetration rate of ride -sharing option services it's going to rise it was 0 .25 % in 2021.
That's going up to 0 .65 % in 2026 if those projections hold to be true and that indicates that the market is still relatively young.
It's still in the early stages of development but it also indicates that it has really really big growth potential.
And this also shows that with all the other services that I mentioned earlier those are like the chunk of the business for ride hailing platforms and this in a way maybe people used to take it as a slightly idealistic green option out of the whole business.
But it's really interesting how business that has panned out and there are plenty of complaints as well as some people are relatively satisfied with it.
So what are your findings Lee?
I think a major complaint from this are hitch or ride sharing passengers is that they find that their drivers could be using different platforms when they're taking on their order.
That means in theory as a passenger you have already traced whether or not you want to share the empty seat when you place the order but the fact that the driver can be using different I mean can be can be registering their information on different platforms and using platforms at the same time.
That's a really really really important thing to know is that there's and that's legal.
The drivers are allowed to do this.
They can register with platform A.
They can register with platform B, C and D and they can take a passenger from platform A and then take another passenger from platform B and one of the biggest problems with doing that from a passengers perspective is your estimated time of arrival.
Because you can't there's no way for you to know because you only get the information from your destination on your app but that other passenger only has the information on their app and there was a passenger named Lin here in China who complained that he often faces situations where the drivers take
more passengers from different ride hailing platforms even after he paid extra money for an exclusive ride sharing option service he does that to save time and once he was told that there were still three other passengers from three different ride hailing platforms and that makes his ride or anyone's
ride who ends up in that situation a lot longer than it was supposed to be.
Right so it's kind of like being kind of clever in exploiting the system a little bit and they're not breaking technically speaking any rules.
Yeah but Lin's example one time he took a one hour trip it was supposed to be a one hour ride it took three hours in total.
That's too much. It's unacceptable.
Right and also this has something to do some argue with the drivers because these are supposedly just regular folks who have a car and they're going from A to B.
These are not your car hailing platform registered drivers who go through a number of hurdles to get vetted.
Although some can argue that even for car hailing platforms they're not super strict about this unlike traditional taxi drivers but for these ride sharing drivers they literally just need to sort of say I'm doing this and they can.
And it's understandable from the driver's point of view because they're not doing anything wrong they're taking advantage of something that's available to them and of course they want to make as much money as they possibly can so I can understand their situation but it's easy to understand the passengers
frustration. Another reason that we are seeing this you know an acceptable situation here in the ride sharing sector is that we are seeing a lot of full -time ride sharing drivers.
You know in theory when you think of this ride sharing service it means like the driver could be like on his or her way to the company and then he might she or just might pick up the passenger but in reality there are a lot of like full -time ride sharing drivers meaning that they are intentionally picking
up different ride sharing orders maybe 10 or 8 within one day and then they're using different platforms to you know earn as much money as possible and the reason behind that is that we're seeing a faster growing of ride hailing service here in China and the market is expanding rapidly but things that in some
cities or smaller cities you're seeing that this sector is saturated meaning that we have an excessive number of ride hailing drivers and according to previous reports many cities including Jinggejun, Suzhou, Chongqing these are pretty developed but smaller cities compared to Beijing and Shanghai they
have announced an alert of excessive transportation capacity and reminded drivers to enter the drive hailing industry cautiously taking Hongzhou as an example a ride hailing vehicle supervision system in Hongzhou showed that a daily average number of online ride hailing orders was about 1 .3 million a second
quarter of 2024 that's an increase of 14 % compared to the previous quarter so that means the market is really growing but that doesn't really represent every driver can take the order because you can see that a daily average number of orders per car was about 15 that's a decrease of nearly 5 % compared
to the previous quarter so there are too many drivers and despite that the market is growing and however you can see the drop in income the general dropping income of drivers so that's why many drivers they're turning to the full -time ride sharing drivers yeah I mean we talked about from a passenger's
perspective one of the downsides is for example Lynn's situation the positive side for customers is that there are so many drivers and I guess that translates to minimal waiting time when you do put in an order that's a great benefit for the passengers but yeah for the drivers themselves when the market
saturated it makes it tough for them to make a living yes and the reason why it's worth our attention to differentiate between the different drivers of the ones that in theory were okay you're just going to work and therefore on the side without any fuss just bring a couple or one more person along
this kind of ride -sharing driver versus the professional full -time ride hailing drivers their intentions are different because the first guy apparently is just trying to earn an extra buck to cover the cost to offset the cost a little bit not really intentionally saying that I want to make a lot of money
from not their full -time job exactly but for the other guy who's the full -time driver he's trying to maximize profits and don't forget he needs to give away a cut of his profit to the platform as well so that person is trying to pack as many people into the car and to try to earn a bit more money so the business
is kind of is kind of messy because you've got like different intentions and different scenarios in that sense yeah and not a lot of transparency either I was kind of trying to search in Canada if they had a similar situation or if something different was going on and I found that recently there was a new
ride -sharing service started in Toronto it's called hover and it's a very interesting business model the idea behind it is this the drivers keep 100 % of the fare they don't pay 15 20 25 30 percent to the company at all whatever they get from the passenger that's what they keep and that is accomplished
I know you're thinking now how does the company make any money well the drivers they pay a $20 membership fee per month and that's how the company makes their money it was so popular in the beginning more than 10 ,000 driver more than 10 ,000 drivers applied in the first month to this company but if we
look ahead in the future they might run into this problem of oversaturation as well and also there are some other complaints coming from mainly consumers or users and I want to run them by you and see if you agree one is people say oh it's because these drivers are not professionals they've not received
training and code of conduct in the sense that some of these drivers might refuse the so -called trouble some passengers and what falls into this category pregnant ladies older folks who might need to use a wheelchair or something like that or people with large luggage or passengers who are not easygoing
apparently that's a label too so that one I understand you know if you have maybe if if you know that that passenger has gotten bad reviews in the past or something in their rude but the other ones you mentioned pregnant women in the elder that's discriminatory exactly but here comes the problem and this might have something
to do with the nature of the service that is it is it a proper business or is it just something that somebody does casually on the side and is not subject to strict company policy and reviews because if you're charging money and treating the other party as a client as somebody who's purchasing your
business then aren't you liable to provide quality quality service and if you are then you can't refuse a pregnant lady but if this is just some guy who's driving his car to work then and trying to earn a buck on the side and he might say well I'm not a professional driver I'm just trying to do something
nice but it is sorry to interrupt you Lee but before I forget is it known to the passenger what kind of driver is coming to pick you up whether it is a full -time driver meaning that's their living or if it's somebody who's just on their way to work I think that's a very good point and to be honest for different
platforms they've got different regulations and 41 and major right hailing service platform here in China and actually they've got their new regulation saying that they the very detailed personal information of the customer cannot really be shown to the driver so that actually to some extent prevent
the potential discrimination and also that could also protect the safety of certain groups of passengers due to previous cases and a and as Huyang said it's a pretty flexible service and that can be I mean convenient for drivers and passengers but also leaving room for controversy and debate and one
example would be the highway tolls which I mentioned earlier that is also a major source of complaints coming from the passengers because for this very flexible right sharing surveys the platform actually encourages drivers and passengers to negotiate how to handle this expenses in advance.
That's a bad idea. That's a bad idea right so that's why a lot of passengers they're complaining that they are being charged they're being asked to pay for this highway tolls and bridge fees without being informed and meantime some drivers they're also complaining that they see very little very few
passengers who are willing to share the highway cost.
Yeah that's like if you go to a restaurant and the manager in the restaurant says yeah just work it out with your waiter.
How much you want to pay for the food right it doesn't make sense.
Yeah but also that doesn't make any sense I agree with you but I understand there's something really murky here that is let's say if you have two people who are going to join this car ride right and then one person joins 20 minutes before the other person and how are you gonna share the highway tolls?
You've been in the car longer.
You should pay more.
Yeah exactly. That might not really happen because in theory the highway toll that you need to cover is only the distance that you are on where you are on the car so in theory you can't really drop any passenger or take the passenger on highway so that would just avoid that situation.
But that's also really interesting because there are different case scenarios when this could be useful this kind of service one is I suppose what people had initially in mind is that you know when it's long -distance travel let's say Beijing to Tianjin and I checked it's about 120 to 100 to sorry 120
to 170 kilometers of distance and it makes a lot of sense if somebody's driving and then you pick somebody up along the way or multiple people or whatnot so that's one kind of situation and then in you know the busy bustling cities of Beijing Shanghai and all these places and then when the travel distance
might be much shorter than that but and then the roads are much more complicated or whatnot and then how do you utilize the service and then people have different disputes.
Yeah one of the disputes that they have internationally and I'm wondering if they have it here in China too is the pickup or perhaps the drop -off point as well and the reason I wanted to ask about whether we know if the driver is a full -time driver that's their job or whether it's just somebody on their
way to work because if you a lot of the times the complaints will say I wanted to go to this building but you're dropping me off a five -minute walk away from there so that's why I wanted to know that distinction.
Right but usually people kind of just assume that if it's a ride -sharing driver it's a ride -sharing driver with the limited the the least amount of requirement and then you've got some of the full -time guys who are like flooding the market there are so many issues here but are there ways to address
them? How do we get better?
How do we move forward?
It's a really good question and I think transparency that company that I mentioned in Toronto is a good example because the customers know how much the drivers are making.
The drivers know how much the passengers are paying.
The passengers know how much the other passengers are paying as well when there's transparency on everything there are fewer opportunities for conflict.
And also we've also seen more safety measures being taken by the major ride -hailing surveys platform here in China due to previous experience so I would say overall the experience is much better than what we have a few years ago.
So with more studying of the market and examining it and coming up with solutions gradually you get better and now we're voicing some of these complaints and see can technology help us to solve these disputes?
