Didi, Uber’s China Rival, announced a total number of 1.43 billion orders in 2015 including taxi, private car, carpooling, bus, test drive, corporate service and other services. And, the total number of registered Didi users had reached 250 million by the end of 2015.

Didi merged with Kuaidi in early 2015. And, its business developed quickly in 2015 which made Didi one of the leaders in the mobile car calling industry in China. The number of Didi’s total orders exceeded 200 million in December 2015.

Year 2015 witnessed an explosive increase in users’ demand for car-hailing services especially in bad weather conditions. Calling requests exceeded 1 million on November 23th 2015 when Beijing had a heavy snow weather, eight times as much as the total number of riding trips in New York on that day.

Allowance of drivers was essential for car calling service providers maintaining a large number of drivers. Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick told in Beijing that Didi spent US$4 billion on driver allowance every year in early 2016 while it was denied by Didi.

Uber China and Didi led China’s car calling industry in 2015. Uber announced 1 million rides as of December 2015. Under the background of car-purchasing restriction policy of some second and third-tier cities, China mobile car calling market is predicted to remain good in 2016. Didi was valued at over US$6 billion in 2015.

Didi rolled out a public SDK this week that enables third-party apps in China to hail a Didi ride from within their own apps. Didi expected to segment services to make it possible for customers share seats in 2016. Meanwhile, Didi planned to open e-commerce business where customers could buy automobiles on Didi mobile app.

Also read: Trend of China’s Automobile Consumption in 2015

Uber China finished nearly US$1 billion financing from Baidu, China Credit Bank, and other large enterprises in China, which made its valuation approximately US$7.5 billion. However, this hasn’t been confirmed by Uber. Uber has also been financing, and the current valuation is about US$51 billion, surpassing the Chinese mobile phone manufacturers Xiaomi to be the world’s highest valuation of private companies.

Currently, Uber business has expanded to more than 300 cities worldwide with growing popularity; and it transports millions of passengers every day. In China, Uber covered 7 cities in July 2014, and it is expected to expand to 40 by the end of this year and 100 by the end of 2016. The total NPV (net present value) of Uber in China Shanghai, Huangzhou, and Shenzhen has been over US$9 billion.

China is an essential market to Uber, which may make up of about one-third of Uber’s total revenue by late 2015. After nearly two years of accumulations, Uber began to increase in monthly total orders and active users; and the growth rates of those are both about four to five times compared to the global market.

Uber utilizes the popularity of smartphones and GPS positioning to provide a platform for car owners and users, and extracts commissions from orders to gain profits. However, in China, private cars who carry for charges without corresponding operational documents would be considered illegal and would be strictly supervised by Chinese transport control department as the “black car”. Thus after entering China, Uber had to cooperate with car rental companies. Major rivals of Uber in China are Didi, Kuaidi, Shenzhou and Yidao. Didi and Kuaidi got a US$2 billion financing after combination with US$15 billion valuation.

During the rapid expansion, the share model is facing global challenges, including China. The company’s business in China has encountered some regulatory resistance and some conflicts with local taxi industry. Problems such as huge losses, excessive car fare subsidies, scalping, fraud transaction, too much reliance on low-cost marketing, loose verification of the driver and vehicle, and so on, are all existing problems faced by Uber. By reducing the allowance of drivers, fraud orders have decreased; however, to maintain continuous growth, Uber is suggested to further localize its management group to win 50% of the Chinese market and keep healthy and reasonable competition.

Also read：China’s Mobile Car Calling Market from 2014 to 2015

As one competitor of Shenzhou Car Rental Service who’s listed in Hong Kong Stock Exchange, eHi Car Rental Service is making struggling to catch up. However, according to its finance data, it still faces many challenges and the gap with Shenzhou Car Rental Service in total revenue is getting bigger.

in Q2 2014, eHi Car Rental Service had RMB200.62 million ($32.72 million) total revenue with an increase of 9% (QoQ). In H1 2014, eHi’s total revenue was RMB383 million ($62.48 million) while Shenzhou’s was RMB1.862 billion ($0.3 billion) which was 5 times more than eHi.

Car renting service is core business of eHi Car Rental Service. eHi’s total revenue of car renting was RMB137 million ($22.34 million) which accounted for 68% of total revenue in Q2 2014.

In Q2 2014, eHi’s business cost was RMB 187 million ($30.5 million) with an increase of 17% YoY.

In Q2 2014, eHi’s operating profit was RMB 13.04 million ($2.12 million) with 6% operating profit rate.

In Q2 2014, eHi’s net loss was RMB2.85 million ($0.46 million) with a decrease of 84% from prior quarter. Since 2012, eHi’s net loss has been increased to RMB348 million ($56.7 million) till Q2 2014.

In comparison with eHi, Shenzhou Car Rental Service, who received several years’ high investment, had net profit of RMB 277.2 million ($45.2 million) in Q2 2014, making a big success in China car rental service market.

Also read: Business Car Renting Services’ Potential in China

As you can see in the above search trend graph, car rental business is taking off in China. 

Top 10 Car Rental Websites by Visits

According to data released by Hitwise, the top 10 car rental websites in China by visits are:

1. eHI Car Service
2. Zuche.com
3. AVIS China
4. Yongche.com
5. Top1.cn
6. Motorent.cn
7. zuche.17u.cn
8. Reocar.com
9. Hertzchina.com
10. Wodingche.com

eHI Car Services websites is leading the online car rental business in China according to Hitwise; but, I doubt it considering Shenzhou Car Rental (zuche.com) is much more popular according to Baidu search trend data:

AVIS is doing better than Hertz with a more localized website and a Chinese brand name.