Shared cars in Guangzhou to reach 20,000 by 2018

Updated: Aug 25, 2017 eguangzhou.gov.cn Print

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More than 30 car sharing companies have rolled out a total of 4,158 cars on Guangzhou's roads as of the end of July, local media outlet xkb.com.cn reports today.

Earlier in August, the Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued a policy promoting the development of the car sharing industry. The policy also requires car-sharing companies to check the ID and driving license of car renters and record the information in the car-rental contract.

The number of shared cars is still rising in Guangzhou and it is projected to reach 20,000 by the end of 2018.

People can download an app on their mobile phones and then use it to find the nearest shared car. [Photo/xkb.com.cn]

Gofun, one of the car-sharing companies, headquartered in Beijing, said that it has begun to apply facial recognition technology to check whether renters' faces match the photos in their IDs and driving licenses. The company also claimed that technologies including which detect driver fatigue, and driver evaluation will be applied in the future.

Although the number of shared cars keeps rising, it is still difficult to find a shared car on the road. According to Gofun, their cars are mostly distributed in Tianhe district, Haizhu district, Baiyun district and the train station.

Similar to bike-sharing, the car-sharing industry also requires a deposit and renters need to take good care of the cars. In this aspect, car sharing companies in Guangzhou are striving to set up a credit system.

Gofun is trying to use a credit system to replace the guarantee deposit which uses a recording device in the car to track drivers' actions and uploads dangerous driving behavior to the credit system.

According to the Guangzhou Car Sharing Special Committee, a bad credit database has been founded to sort out the bad credit data from car sharing companies and promote data sharing for the whole industry.