Research On The Competitive Advantage And Potential Demand Of Car-sharing On The Perspective Of Travel-cost

In recent years,electric car-sharing rental by time has emerged and developed rapidly in Chinese cities.This mode of transportation separates the right to use and ownership of vehicles,meets people’s diverse travel needs,helps reduce urban car ownership,alleviates urban traffic congestion,and greatly improves the allocation efficiency of transportation resources.Although the development of car-sharing complements other travel modes and has brought a lot of convenience and benefits to urban transportation,it leads to fierce competition with some other modes(such as taxis)and redistributes the interests of market players as more and more operators put vehicles into markets.At the same time,competition and substitution among travel modes will bring huge potential demand shift from other modes to car-sharing.Therefore,in order to promote the healthy and sustainable development of the car-sharing industry,it is necessary to focus on the market with cost advantages and evolution trend of car-sharing under different travel situations,and explore its potential demand.These will be of great significance to rationally regulate and configure the car-sharing market.Based on the car-sharing and taxi travel orders and GPS trajectory data in Beijing,this study discusses the competitive advantage market,development trend and potential demand of car-sharing from the perspective of travel-cost,aiming to put forward reasonable strategies for standardized operation of car-sharing.Firstly,based on the operating data of car-sharing and taxis,the users’ characteristics and the spatial temporal distribution characteristics of trips are extracted and analyzed.Secondly,according to the travel characteristics and trajectory build travel-cost comparison model,respectively measuring contrast the travel costs of two ways in car-sharing scenarios and taxi scenario.It includes the actual travel-cost of car-sharing and the simulated travel-cost of taxi,as well as the actual travel-cost of taxi and the simulated travel-cost of car-sharing.Then,cost differences are compared to locate the cost advantages of car-sharing in travel mileage,travel duration,utilization efficiency and other dimensions.And discuss the influence of different travel factors(such as time cost,waiting time,etc.)on the cost advantage of car-sharing and the competitive evolution trend under different travel conditions.Finally,the potential demand for car-sharing under different travel conditions(such as pick-up distance,time cost and price fluctuation)is explored through cost advantages.The results reveal that,under the current pricing conditions,the cost advantage of car-sharing is particularly obvious when the rental duration is not too long(less than 14 hours),the utilization efficiency is relatively high,and the stop time is shorter than 8 hours.It also finds that it makes great cost advantage of using car-sharing in periods or areas of urban taxi shortages.In the cases of short distance trips,car-sharing has bigger cost advantage for the middle and low-income groups.The popularity of bike-sharing can also increase the cost advantage of car-sharing,which indicates that the synergy of different travel models could promote the development of car sharing.However,when people travel long,the cost advantage of car-sharing would be minimally affected by the elements,such as people’s income and the development of bike-sharing.In other words,car-sharing would keep its cost advantage in the cases of long travel,especially when its utilization efficiency is high and the travel stop time is short.In addition,the car-sharing has a large potential demand in the market.Currently,the shift rate between travel modes,which refers to the ratio of orders that can be shifted from taxi to car-sharing trips in Beijing,exceeds 90%.When traveling long distances or duration(more than30 km or 1 hour),the travel cost advantage of car-sharing becomes larger.In such situations,the travel cost of car-sharing is about 50% of the cost of a taxi.We also find that the cost advantage of car-sharing is relatively high,and the potential demand is large,in cases where the pick-up distance is relatively short,the users are in the middle-or low-income levels,and the popularity of bicycle-sharing is relatively high.Operators can take into account the differentiated pricing of demand and benefit,promote the connection of car-sharing and other multi-modes of transportation to meet the demand and development of car-sharing.This research is helpful to understand the travel needs and transportation modes choices of car-sharing users from the perspective of travel-cost,clarify the competitive advantage market of car-sharing,formulate reasonable operation strategies(such as pricing scheme,facility guarantee,etc.),and promote the healthy and sustainable development of car-sharing in China.