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China Car Sales Slowdown

China’s passenger vehicle sales has been through 6 month of yoy decline (Jun – November) and will post the first yoy annual decline in 2018, after 26 years of boom

Two sources: CAAM and CPCA, passenger car sales down 16-18% yoy in November.

There are two factors to consider here:

  1. Long-term: the market is reaching maturity.
    a. Although there may be another few years before China finds its stable level of car ownership, it has become a fairly high level of –  an average Chinese household has around 0.58 cars. (China’s household number has been estimated to be ~455 mn and China has ~310 mn automobiles by the end of 2017, assuming 6/7  of which are passenger cars)
    b. The second half of China’s car ownership boom is at the beginning of shared vehicles & an era of transportation-as-a-service.  Therefore, China may never reach a stable level of ownership as high as major industrial countries’.
    c. China’s cities are more condensed. Population is so centralized that high car ownership rate in cities may not be possible
    c. an average US household has 1.968 cars
  2. Short-term: consumer confidence & tariffs
    a. The tariff was proposed to be decreased from 25% to 15% in May, but due to trade war the tariff for US produced cars were raised to 40% since July.
    b. Consumer confidence is damaged while financing may also be limited

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Very Interesting Statement from Running on Empty by Peter Peterson

Democratic – there is no limit to how much they can take from government

Republican – there is no limit to how little they can give to government

where “they = voters”

It seems that the swing between two parties causes the constantly larger promises that are asymmetric in terms of what voters get – no one would promise more restrictive policies to gain votes.

Data Breaches And Another Push to Migrate to Cloud?

The second largest data breaches reported in November that Marriott’s Starwood reservation system has been breached since 2014, affecting up to 500 million guests.

A few days later, another major breach was reported – Quora users’ account info and private chats were exposed, affecting around 100 million people.

While the largest hack in history involved around 3 billion accounts of Yahoo in 2013, Marriott’s will probably have the most “impact” as it not only involves usernames, emails, passwords, etc. (as in the case of Yahoo/Quora), but also includes passport info and date of birth among others. The latter two kinds are more personal and sensitive and could be combined to get access to many other things.

Thought One

This is just another reason why companies should move (at least part of) their info system to cloud services providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Technically, those companies have much better security expertise and do provide an edge in protecting users from those breaches.

And for corporate executives, the data security and related issues are outsourced and liabilities are kinda transferred. Media and users might focus more on why tech companies could be breached. (so how did FB data get hacked?)

Thought Two

It seems that most advices on breaches include change password, double-check card transactions and credit reports, freeze your cards… All about what customers should put extra efforts on themselves.

But I thought users should be reimbursed for their trust being failed. Corporates should take more responsibilities and be forced to provide appropriate remedies; otherwise every company could just save money and let those breaches happen again, when
prob(breach) * loss on breach(including remedies, future loss business, etc.) < cost of good data protection

While financial institutions would take some financial damage in those breaches for users, the identity damage might be hard to recover.

Much more efforts should be beforehand in protecting data. Or it’s not only a full network of tracing, but also a future fake network of people.

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Beyond Cars – Bike & Scooter Sharing in Age of Ride-Hailing

共享自行车已经进入市场很多年，模式上在近年有多方面突破；另一方面，以 Birds 为首的美国 scooter 的热潮从 2017 年开始迅速蔓延，之前的共享自行车公司也找到了美国新的突破口，毕竟相比于中国自行车的普及和流行，美国自行车一直处于出行需求的角落（有安全监管、道路等因素）。

大多数共享自行车和共享 scooter 诞生之初，就内涵了与 uber/lyft 相近的模式和基因，又同时在解决一个大问题的不同局部。它们早晚会相遇是公认的事实。

各自 2019 年 IPO 计划的临近，出于公司定位和战略说明的角度，以及财务角度，uber 和 lyft 的出手之快出乎一些意料（相比于市场的成熟度和发展时间），却也极其合理。这篇 blog 主要关于 lyft 的收购。

2018 年 4 月，uber 率先宣布了第一笔交易，$100 – 200 mn 收购 JUMP Bike。

JUMP Bike | Source: uber.com/ride/uber-bike/

2018 年 6 月，有报道 Lyft 在寻求 $250 mn 收购 Motivate（旗下拥有纽约的 Citi Bike 和加州的 Ford GoBike 等）；uber 也尝试参与，竞价收购，最后 7 月初由 Lyft 拿下。
– Motivate 2017 rev. $100 mn, ~ half coming from sponsorship
– Motivate has ~30k bikes, operating in 8 US cities – Citi Bike (New York), Ford GoBike (San Francisco Bay area), Divvy (Chicago), Blue Bikes (Boston metro area), Capital Bikeshare (Washington, D.C. metro area), BIKETOWN (Portland metro area), CoGo (Columbus, Ohio), and Nice Ride (Minneapolis)
– 纽约的 Citi Bike 用户数约 15 万；For GoBike 17 年6 月与 Ford 达成合作正式 launch，截至 18 年 1 月用户数近 1 万
– Motivate has an advantage of exclusive deal terms with cities including NYC, SF, among others
– Motivate’s bikes are dock-based, which was an old model but fit with cities like NYC
– Unionized workers (~600) are a major issue, which was not included in the acquisition

收购后，Lyft 将投入 $100 mn 发展 Citi Bike，五年内自行车数量增加两倍将达近 4 万。

Citi Bike | Source: citibikenyc.com
Citi Bike Pricing Plan_Dec 2018 | Source: citibikenyc.com/pricing

在湾区，尽管开始时 Motivate 有 exclusive 合同，但由于纽约和 SF 有一个区别在于 SF 很多上下坡，在曼哈顿适用的自行车在 SF 的使用场景大幅缩减，电动助力自行车 (e-bike) 的需求凸显。这给了其它 bike-sharing 公司一个绝佳的机会，以 e-bike 的形式抢进 SF 市场，绕开 Motivate 的排他性条款，比如 Social Bicycles。随后 SF 与 Motivate 达成和解，基本算允许了其它电动自行车的试验，尽管有数量限制。

Ford GoBike 在今年 1 月展示了 e-bike 之后，于 4 月在 SF 正式 launch 了电动自行车。

Ford GoBike @ SAP Center, San Jose | Source: fordgobike instagram
Ford GoBike Plus with pedal assist (电动助力)，服务 SF 市场，18 年 4 月 正式 launch，首批 250 辆 | Source: fordgobike.com/plus
Ford GoBike Pricing Plan_Dec 2018 | Source: fordgobike.com/pricing

18 年 1 月，SF 的第一个无桩 bike-sharing permit， 250 辆，给了 JUMP (formerly Social Bicycle，见上文)，JUMP 自行车是全电动 (和 scooter，也是电动)。

这也是 uber CEO 后来解释 JUMP 收购时一直强调的每个城市/地区的不同，需要 city-by-city 地考虑。uber 选择从 SF 开始发力。

Lyft 选择了更高的起点。Motivate 确实是体量更大、更成熟的 bike-sharing 公司。加之 e-bike 的额外成本，以及 permit 的数量显示，仅依靠 JUMP 或许会让 uber 在这个局部战场输给 Lyft。

2017 total bike-sharing trips taken in millions | Source: nacto.org

加之 scooter 的起飞（全部为电动），尤其在加州主要城市的流行，不出意外，uber 在寻求另一起收购，一起这个领域决定性的收购，Uber said to be negotiating a multibillion-dollar takeover of scooter-sharing startup。

Consolidation 不仅没有缺席，而且会来得更快。

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