Ride-Hailing in China

Half a world away, the Chinese ride-hailing industry shares similar attributes, and faces similar challenges, to those in the West. Competition over drivers; high insurance costs, duopolistic market; gig-economy questions; experimenting with autonomous vehicles… let’s start 感動人 🇨🇳

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I sat down to talk with Lock Tang, MD of OPPLAND, a data and event company based in Shanghai, and VP of the Chinese ride-hailing association, to talk about the Chinese market. 

The trigger? The Southeast Asia Ride-Hailing Summit is a global event taking place in Bangkok, on June 19th-20th. The event touches on market trends, regulation, fleet management, EV transition and more, with speakers from Bolt, BlueBird, InDrive, sponsored by Onde and TADA, with Bolt as strategic partners. More on the event here.

Barak: Hi Lock. Tell us about yourself and the ride-hailing association. 

Lock: Hi. Great to be here, thanks. I am the founder of OPPLAND, a data and event company based in Shanghai, focusing on the ride-hailing industry. We provide car-sales training, to help with selling to ride-hailing drivers; sell ride-hailing related data, such as usage per region; and have been producing industry events for the past 7 years. I am also the VP of the ride-hailing industry, an association gathering ride-hailing players, OEMs, payment solutions, mapping, fleet rental, insurance, internet companies, OTAs and others linked to the industry. 

Barak: Tell me more about the market. Who are the key players? 

Lock: DiDi is the key player, with around 75% of the market. In the past DiDi had 90% of the market, but after it was blocked for two years from the app store, following investigation by the Chinese government, it lost market share and was “only” 65%. It has since rebounded to 75%. The second app is AMAP, from the Alibaba group, with around 20%, and the rest is split between some 360 different local apps. 

Barak: Walk me through this. How was DiDi able to keep its market dominance? 

Lock: DiDi has been around since 2014, and is the strongest brand name. They are convenient and deliver a good service. In people’s minds, they are ride-hailing. 

Barak: Let’s talk numbers. How big is the ride-hailing market?

Lock: In 2024, the total market was about 11 billion rides, or an average of 30 million rides a day. The market grew from just over 9 billion rides in 2023. That number is split between 500 million users, half of China’s population. In terms of supply, that is harder to estimate. There are around 7 million licensed drivers on the DiDi platform, but there are around 7 million more unlicensed drivers. These are people that are in it for the short term, for example between jobs. The reason there are so many unlicensed drivers is because some local governments don’t mandate checks during the signup process. As for cars, DiDi numbers again, there are 3 million cars - but we estimate there to be 6 million more unlicensed cars. 

Barak: What about food and grocery delivery? I know Meituan is leading that. 

Lock: Yes. There hasn’t been a crossover between ride-hailing and delivery. DiDi hasn’t been able to enter the delivery market, and Meituan hasn’t been able to enter ride-hailing. Not in a meaningful way. That goes back to branding and people’s perceptions. 

Barak: OK, back to ride-hailing. What are some key trends?

Lock: They are mostly linked to supply, because the demand side has been won by DiDi and there is not much new there. So first, there is a competition over drivers and vehicle supply. China is full of car-partner (gig economy car rental) companies, and as a result, car rental prices have been pushed down. In addition, ride-hailing companies (Didi etc.) are offering more benefits to drivers to keep them engaged on the platform. These can be health benefits, paying for car insurance, providing food money - all connected to time spent on the platform and driver score. 

Secondly, there is an uptake of electric vehicles. In the Southern part of China, where the weather is warm and EVs are more effective, 90% of the ride-hailing cars are electric. When you go North, the weather is colder and batteries are less effective, that number goes down. 

Also insurance is a big issue. Insurance prices are very high, more than double what an average consumer pays. There is no easy solution, because ride-hailing has more accidents, they are on the road more, and fixing or replacing batteries is expensive. But the government is trying to solve that. 

And finally, there is growing cooperation between DiDi and taxis, driven by increasing demand for ride-hailing services, which is hurting taxi demand. A compromise between DiDi and taxis has been reached recently, in which DiDi started payment commission to taxis, but less than the average 30%ish it pays its own drivers. 

Barak: I have to say that these challenges are the ones the west is facing as well. What about autonomous cars?

Lock: yes, a trend. The leading player is Baidu, which has over 400 cars in Wuhan. In the first three months of 2025, they had over 1 million rides. Baidu uses their own app - they don’t want to work with DiDi. Other players include DiDi which partnered with Xpeng to build an autonomous ride-hailing car, Pony.ai and WeRide, which have smaller scale pilots across China. 

Barak: Back to drivers. Most of the industry challenges are linked to them. How does their employment model look like: 

Lock: drivers are independent contractors, which is an issue here. They don’t enjoy benefits such as health insurance and pension. Government is working on fixing the sector, but it takes time. 

Barak: Before we go, tell me about the Southeast Asia ride-hailing summit in Bangkok. 

Lock: Yes, we’re having our first international summit this June, in Bangkok. It will deal with ride-hailing in the broader SE market, covering trends, regulation, EV transition and more. We’ve already got speakers from Bolt, BlueBird and InDrive, and the event is sponsored by Onde and TADA, with Bolt as strategic partners. Your audience is welcome to join.