After the disappearance of the Spring Festival motorcycle army, ride-hailing services support a mobile China
Regarding the memories of the Spring Festival travel rush, one of the most shocking scenes was the "motorcycle army" on the streets of the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta. In the past decade or even longer, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers rode motorcycles, with woven bags tied around their waists and their wives and children on the back seats, crossing provincial boundaries in the cold wind and freezing rain. This was once a powerful sight, symbolizing hard - work and perseverance, but also full of the helplessness and danger of long - distance travel.
However, observant people will notice that the "motorcycle army" is decreasing year by year. The change started around 2019. With the sharp increase in private car ownership and the penetration of Internet carpooling platforms, the former "motorcycle riders" began to sell their motorcycles in an orderly manner or leave them in the factory workshops, and instead, they opened their mobile phones to find a carpool for their journey home.
This transformation is not only due to the increase in income but also a generational leap in travel patterns. Behind the disappearance of the motorcycle army is the awakening of tens of millions of users in the sinking market to "decent travel". On the seventh anniversary of the launch of Hello Ride - hailing, during the Spring Festival travel rush in 2026, Hello is expected to release more than 100 million travel requests. With a conversion rate of 50% to 60%, it means that more than 50 million person - times no longer need to endure the cold or the torture of multiple bus transfers. Instead, through the "fellow - villagers helping fellow - villagers" model, they can achieve one - stop direct travel to their doorsteps.
Jiang Tao, the senior vice - president of Hello, attributes this growth to "the stimulation of demand". From a sociological perspective, the rise of ride - hailing fills the "capillary areas" that public transportation and online car - hailing cannot reach. For the problem of the "last 100 kilometers" from the CBDs of first - tier cities to small towns, ride - hailing is an effective social solution. In the past, due to the restrictions on live pets by trains and buses, pet owners often suffered from "fostering anxiety" during the Spring Festival. Now, ride - hailing has turned "traveling home with pets" from a luxury into a necessity. At the same time, with the evolution of consumer psychology, people generally believe that ride - hailing is both a consumption upgrade (more comfortable and door - to - door than buses) and a consumption downgrade (cheaper than special cars).
In the past seven years, while the growth rate of the online car - hailing market has dropped to less than 10%, the ride - hailing industry has maintained an average annual compound growth rate of about 40%. By 2025, the scale of the online ride - hailing market has exceeded 60 billion RMB and is very likely to cross the 100 - billion mark in the next two years. It is a so - called "hidden champion" ignored by the mainstream. It is unassuming but deeply embedded in the daily travel of some people, weaving a dynamic and real - time matching travel network covering the whole of China during every Spring Festival and every holiday.
Breaking through after the industry's pain: The ride - hailing model
The early development of the ride - hailing industry was full of ups and downs. Before 2019, affected by serious safety accidents, the entire industry was pushed to the forefront of public opinion and fell into a huge trust crisis and stereotype. After the industry suffered pain, the public's idealized expectations for "shared travel" were replaced by fear and doubt. Hello entered the market in such a context. As the person in charge of the ride - hailing business, Jiang Tao, the senior vice - president and general manager of the Inclusive Business Department of Hello, said that at that time, the team faced the challenge of finding a mature implementation carrier and development path for such an idealized product as ride - hailing.
Hello chose a very challenging path. In the Internet era of burning money for scale, Hello Ride - hailing achieved profitability from the first year of its launch and has maintained a record of never making losses for seven consecutive years. In Hello's view, ride - hailing should make use of the marginal cost of private cars. Jiang Tao said bluntly that ride - hailing is not for the sake of innovation but to return to users and solve the pain points of the ecosystem and transactions themselves.
In the process of reconstructing rules, Hello implemented the car - owner PK model. For a long time, the ride - hailing industry has used the "first - come, first - served" order - selection model. Although it gives car owners great freedom, it has also spawned a gray cheat software industry chain. A large number of malicious car owners use illegal order - grabbing software to instantly snatch high - quality orders and then charge passengers extra fees, force carpooling or take detours, seriously distorting the matching efficiency.
To counter this distortion, Hello introduced the PK model into the transaction process three years ago under great pressure. This means that when multiple car owners choose an order at the same time, the system no longer simply determines "who is faster", but temporarily locks the order and distributes it through algorithms to the car owner who is closer, has a higher degree of route coincidence and has a better past performance evaluation. "We made such an innovation and suffered a great cost and loss in the initial stage. But we still persevered." Jiang Tao said.
This "self - inflicted" intervention measure finally showed governance results. Over the past three years, the use rate of cheat software on the Hello platform has decreased by two - thirds, the order - completion rate has increased by about 6 percentage points, and more than 2 billion RMB of incremental income has been created for car owners. Sacrificing short - term growth to ensure the ecological health has helped Hello break through in a highly competitive market.
In addition to in - depth technological development, another trump card for Hello to break through is an open ecosystem - actively opening its own transportation capacity and services to almost all mainstream traffic platforms. Five years ago, when Jiang Tao proposed the open - door strategy, there were many objections within the company. People were worried that it would "nurture competitors". But Jiang Tao believes in the logic of the free market and thinks that mutual transactions can make the whole market better. Facts have proved that this attitude has made Hello Ride - hailing one of the very few travel service providers that can be "seen everywhere" on platforms such as WeChat, Alipay, Gaode, Didi, Tencent and Meituan.
This open attitude not only helps Hello become a leader in the industry but also prompts it to try to establish a new industry consensus. When facing industry problems such as "exclusive ride turning into carpooling" caused by cross - platform order - taking, Hello actively calls on its peers to establish an information - sharing mechanism and a black - list inter - communication platform. Moving from competition to co - governance is not only to solve technical problems such as inaccurate positioning or performance deviation but also to build a bridge of trust between data islands.
Seven years of dedicated service, creating real - value inclusion
Before Hello entered the market, about 80% of the transaction volume of ride - hailing was concentrated within the city. In essence, it was more like a low - cost supplement to taxis and online car - hailing. However, in the past seven years, this order structure has reversed. Now, inter - city and cross - city transactions account for 60% to 70% of the total. This transformation means that ride - hailing has evolved from an auxiliary urban transportation tool to a "capillary network" woven into China's geography. It is no longer just a means of transportation within the Fifth Ring Road but has truly penetrated into counties, towns and even villages that are difficult to reach by traditional public transportation.
In Jiang Tao's view, there are three forces on the demand side. First, there is a consumption upgrade based on "door - to - door" service. Ride - hailing has completely broken the shackles of the "station - to - station" model of railway stations and bus terminals, making long - distance travel smoother than ever. Second, there is a consumption downgrade brought about by extreme cost - effectiveness. In the current economic environment where stability is pursued, ride - hailing has become an irreplaceable "alternative to online car - hailing" in the hearts of high - frequency inter - city commuters. Finally, there is consumption stimulation. The potential demands that were originally "disappeared" due to the extreme inconvenience of carrying pets, excessive luggage or overly remote routes have been re - awakened under the flexible matching mechanism of ride - hailing.
In Hello's logic, "inclusion" has never been an exaggerated term but a consideration for car owners and passengers. Jiang Tao revealed a figure: In the past seven years, Hello Ride - hailing has distributed more than 100 billion RMB in income to car owners in total.
For car owners, this money may be the money saved for their children's milk powder, the medical expenses for their parents' treatment in the county, or the "emergency money" to pay off mortgages and car loans.
To protect this simple sense of gain, Hello broke the industry - wide practice of "weekly settlement" or even "monthly settlement" when it was launched in 2019 and became the first and at that time the only platform that supported car owners to withdraw money at any time. Jiang Tao explained: "This money may not be so urgent for us office workers who get a monthly salary, but for many car owners, being able to put the money they earn into their pockets every day is their simplest wish." Giving up the platform's cash - flow benefits and choosing to empathize with car owners has laid the foundation for the trust of the Hello platform.
The far - reaching impact of inclusion is also reflected in a series of product designs for the refined transformation of supply - demand balance. Take "Comfortable Carpooling" as an example. This is a balance point designed by Hello to solve the problem of "demand but no supply" on remote routes. On these routes, if passengers choose an exclusive ride, the cost is too high, and if they choose traditional carpooling, the experience is extremely poor because car owners are not willing to take orders (the unit price is too low and it is troublesome).
Through the performance rule of "carpooling with at most one more person" and the re - pricing logic, Hello has established a balance. Passengers can get a certainty and comfort close to an exclusive ride at a price much lower than that of an exclusive ride, while car owners are willing to drive to those previously ignored remote destinations because of the higher single - order income. The depth of this inclusion is to revitalize the urban - rural mobility network that might otherwise shrink or stagnate through technology and mechanisms. It allows every ordinary person to connect their hometown and the city in a more decent way and enables every private car on the urban - rural roads to gain a due sense of labor dignity while on the way.
Of course, although the ride - hailing model has achieved inclusion in terms of business logic, in actual operation, this model depends on the complex interweaving of technology and human feelings. Ride - hailing is not a standardized assembly - line product and highly depends on the contractual spirit and mutual - assistance consensus between car owners and passengers. When this idealized mutual assistance is placed in a real - world social scenario, the gap between algorithms and reality begins to appear.
The pain point that makes passengers feel helpless is the performance deviation caused by data fragmentation. Some passengers said that they clearly paid for an "exclusive ride" on the Hello platform, but when they got in the car, they found that there were other platform users in the car. Jiang Tao frankly analyzed the "island effect" behind it: Due to the lack of an effective data link between various travel platforms, Hello cannot grasp the real - time order - taking situation of car owners on other platforms, which makes it difficult for a single platform to achieve real - sense closed - loop supervision. This situation has led to a regulatory blind spot in cross - platform transactions and is one of the root causes of the chaotic industry situation. To break this deadlock, Jiang Tao issued an initiative, inviting peers to jointly establish an information - sharing mechanism, hoping to eliminate illegal behaviors as much as possible through industry cooperation.
In addition, Hello has spent a lot of effort on the joint prevention and control of users with bad records. It is reported that since its operation for seven years, Hello has managed tens of thousands of passengers and car owners with bad records in the "blacklist". However, due to data barriers, these users may be active on other platforms. Jiang Tao proposed that if the leading players in the industry can reach a consensus first and share the desensitized black - list data that has been accumulated for many years, it can not only significantly reduce the platform's governance cost but also purify the entire ride - hailing ecosystem.
Fellow - villagers helping fellow - villagers, the "capillary network" during the Spring Festival travel rush
In Hello's business review, Jiang Tao often quotes a story to explain the complexity of ride - hailing. A rural woman from a small town spent 20 yuan on Pinduoduo to buy a box of oranges. When she received the goods, she found that the express box was broken and one - third of the oranges were rotten. Her first reaction was usually not anger but joy because she thought that she only spent 20 yuan and two - thirds of the oranges were still edible, so the cost - effectiveness was extremely high. However, if the same box of oranges was sent to a white - collar worker who was used to high - end services and had a monthly income of tens of thousands, the result would probably be an angry negative review.
The ride - hailing product is in this polarized evaluation. For the real general public outside the Fifth Ring Road, choosing ride - hailing can undoubtedly result in a decent journey; while those who pursue standardized services at the level of special cars think that it is full of uncertainties. Jiang Tao believes that behind these perceptions lies the essence of ride - hailing. It cannot and does not attempt to satisfy everyone. The sense of torn reputation is an inevitable "side effect" of a valuable product when serving a specific group of people and pursuing extreme cost - effectiveness. Hello firmly chooses to stand with the real general public.
The ride - hailing product form has been closely related to the Spring Festival travel rush since its inception. Facing this large - scale periodic migration, any single public transportation system is difficult to fully cover the suddenly surging peak. In the past seven years, Hello Ride - hailing has gradually grown into an indispensable supplementary transportation capacity during the Spring Festival travel rush.
In the context of the Spring Festival travel rush, the value of ride - hailing is magnified to the extreme. It provides a more targeted "one - stop direct" service than trains and airplanes, allowing young people with large luggage or even pets to avoid the hassle of multiple transfers. This spirit of "fellow - villagers helping fellow - villagers", with the support of algorithms, has been transformed into a definite guarantee for returning home. For hundreds of millions of loyal users, ride - hailing is their choice for a decent journey home during the Spring Festival travel rush.
After seven years, Hello Ride - hailing has served more than 300 million passengers in total, completed 3.6 billion orders, and has 38 million certified car owners. It has enabled people who were originally strangers to reach a simple contract in the same car.
Looking to the future, this ride - hailing network that has grown due to the Spring Festival travel rush will play more social values. In the process of rural revitalization, it will link urban resources with rural needs; in regional coordinated development, it can effectively activate the social resources for inter - city commuting; and in the cultural and tourism flow during holidays, it provides a more flexible and human - oriented travel plan than traditional passenger transportation.
Hello Ride - hailing's seven - year journey has proved that technology can not only pursue efficiency but also embrace the ignored needs outside the Fifth Ring Road. The once long and arduous Spring Festival travel route to hometown is becoming shorter and warmer with each ride - hailing order.