Shenzhen company facilitates shared mobility in China

Linked Auto Business Group, a car rental company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, is stepping up efforts to drive the development of shared mobility in the country with innovative means.

Established in 2016, the group has around 70,000 SUVs in over 300 cities in China, and the number of registered users has exceeded 10 million, said Liu Jinyu, the assistant to the group's president.

Instead of focusing on first-tier cities, it has second-tier cities as bases and from there it reaches to smaller cities where people have greater demand for shared mobility.

According to a report from consulting firm Deloitte, around one third of mobility will be through shared vehicles by 2050, but the figure now is less than 12 percent.

Linked Auto is also planning to make the most of idle cars in big cities whose number could total 10 million.

Jiang Weiping, president of car rental division at the group, said those private cars will play an important role in initiating the ecosystem of shared mobility. The group said it plans to include at least 10,000 private cars into its fleet in 2020.

Linked Auto is also planning to introduce new technologies including blockchain into its business, which will help speed up the development of services including used vehicles.

Such technology will allow the buyers to learn about all the things about the vehicles and car makers can know the actual conditions about vehicle use and maintenance and thus have a better understanding of customer demands, said the group's CTO Shen Jian.