PPzuche, a P2P car sharing platform which has already rolled out service in Singapore, will hit Chinese market on October 10 (report in Chinese). PPzuche will first land in Beijing, mainly focused on low-and medium-tier cars, whose owners range from 25 to 40 years old. iCarsclub, developper of PPzuche, localized their services and planned to cooperate with domestic roadside assistance companies in the future.
Instead of owning cars, PPzuche creates a virtual fleet from the car owners who list their car on the car sharing platform and rent it out to nearby drivers who need a car, turning private car resources into money-making opportunities rather than letting them sleep in the garage.
The service is similar in many ways to car rental services like YongChe or America’s ZipCar, except that it collects cars from both private and business car owners. The company claimed that car sharing is a better alternative than car rental, because it offers cars in better conditions, has cheaper rentals and simple renting procedure. PPzuche will take 30% of the rentals, while car owners will get the rest 70%.
In order to protect the cars, the company launched a stringent check for all drivers that join iCarsclub. A credit system is established and drivers with low credit ratings will be deprived of the right to hire cars on the platform. Vehicle-mounted tracking devices will send alarms when the rented cars are out of the designated area. Besides that, car insurance will cover all the cars registered on the platform.
All transactions are done online without the nuisance of completing tedious paperwork. Car owners and drivers do not have to meet each other, because the hardware installed in member’s vehicles will allow the renter to unlock the doors with a phone app.
According to data released by the company, PPzuche now attracted more than 1,000 private cars and around 7,000 registered users in Singapore since its launch in Dec. 2012.
Uber, American online car booking service, also made forays into Chinese market earlier this year.
image credit: PPzuche
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