Apparently because shared bicycles aren’t
enough of a challenge, Nanjing has decided to embrace shared cars.
According to a report
on Tuesday, 200 Chery eQ electric cars will be available through Gofun Chuxing (Gofun 出行--a Beijing-based state owned firm already in
4 Chinese cities) for use by anyone with a driver’s license and identity card
and a 699 yuan deposit by the end of April. Many vehicles will be based at subway
stations, while others will be parked at business centers, software and
innovation parks, university campuses, and the city’s historical and tourist
sites. Prospective users will do much the same as they do for share-bikes: download the app; locate where the nearest
car is parked; use their phone to scan and unlock the car lock. Charges will be
based on the length of time the vehicle is used and the kilometers traveled.
Coupons and other discounts will be offered, mirroring the current bike-sharing
situation, where price wars are growing increasingly common.
But what’s different is that unlike the
private bike-share business that burst upon Chinese cities this year far faster
and deeper than spring itself here, the car-share program is a direct outgrowth
of the Nanjing city government’s plan to deal with traffic problems. Last year,
Nanjing issued a “New Energy Vehicle [新能源汽车] Promotion and Application Program" document which urged the
expansion of charging stations in residential compounds, hotels, commercial
areas, tourist attractions, institutions and enterprises, and the allocation of
free parking electric and hybrid cars.
Nanjing officials recognise that they can’t
halt migration into the city from the countryside and its concomitant social
effects: Their primary purpose in programs such as this one is to prevent
educated and affluent residents from moving elsewhere. Offering a variety of
government-sponsored services designed to address citizen needs—and their complaints--is
a major part of that strategy. Nanjing knows that economic growth only goes so
far these days.
So this is local policy generated locally, not firms
parachuting into Nanjing and acting as grassroots agents for economic growth in
place of the State. Call it “Small Socialism”—providing ways and means for
State authorities to tackle sudden entrepreneurship locally. If there’s sharing
in this new shared-economy, government officials want to be the visible hands offering and regulating it, ruling the roads it builds.
To that end, Tuesday’s news report reveals a somewhat
defensive tone in announcing this shared-car venture, probably because the
local government is concerned about objections and problems to come, and has
had some experience in previous months with initiatives that didn’t quite
flower.
For example, the article admits that while “from sharing bicycles to sharing cars, the sharing economy bring conveniences
to the lives of ordinary people, the arrival of the new economy is often ahead
of existing infrastructure and regulations, and producing new issues to those
managing the city.” Car-sharing ventures in China currently are at best
breaking even, according to the piece. While there is demand from students and
recent graduates, tourists, enterprises and work-units, the real profits are
likely to be found through other means, such as advertising on the cars being driven,
financing, insurance and other value-added services [增值业务] increasingly associated with “Big Data”. Decreasing the carbon
tire-print of cars is one goal, but making money is obviously another.
One foundation for a successful program could
well be the
availability of free parking for shared-cars, because that facilitates
access for likely users and improves the turnover rate. With only 40 of those
sites in operation currently (and many of those on the city periphery), Nanjing
government is looking into subdividing some of the high-use parking facilities
downtown (and at the rail stations and airport) into free slots for electric
and hybrid cars. (High parking fees in locations handicapped two car-sharing
companies that were trialled in Nanjing last year.) Creating areas where residents can rent
a bicycle (or motorcycle) and also transfer to an electric car might be one way
forward, the article notes--and it may help to reduce traffic congestion
brought about by more vehicles on the city’s many narrow avenues.
There are other obstacles, including
convincing potential customers that there aren't steep downsides.
For example, one resident interviewed did
acknowledge that while he found the option of a shared-car inviting, he worried
about what to do if there was an accident or a traffic violation in the car he
would be driving. The piece contended that the new venture would be offering a
non-deductible insurance policy for customers, while urging drivers to deal
with any violations and fines themselves.
How that component of conduct will be incorporated into the fast-expanding data collection part of Nanjing’s urban management system isn’t
being made clear. In so many ways here, local officials in China are still working
on the rules of the road.
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