Chinese EV maker NIO on Wednesday tied up with Dida Chuxing, a local ride-hailing startup, to encourage more NIO owners to join the latter's carpooling platform to share their empty seats with commuters.
Dida Chuxing will provide a green vetting channel for NIO owners so that they can pass the vetting process as quickly as possible.
The two companies will also encourage NIO owners and Dida Chuxing users to share interesting stories from their journeys to the NIO App and Dida App through creative activities.
This is the latest effort NIO is trying to bring more value to its owners.
Last week, NIO signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Chinese retail giant Suning to collaborate in the areas of channel expansion, product sales, consumer services, branding, technology products, and development.
Under the agreement, Suning Plaza projects across the country will move forward with the construction of NIO Houses and NIO Space showrooms.
Suning's offline locations such as Suning Plaza and Suning Hotel will work with NIO to create a charging station customer service system.
NIO enters into strategic partnership with Chinese retail giant Suning
In June this year, Dida Chuxing released a blue paper showing that by the end of 2019, there were 17 companies in China operating carpooling services in over 400 cities.
The cumulative number of registered vehicles for such services was 30 million, representing only 21.9 percent of the total existing private car ownership. There are also only 300 million registered passengers.
This indicates that the carpooling market is not yet saturated and there is still plenty of room for growth in terms of both supply and passengers, according to the blue paper.
In January this year, a media report said that in August 2019, Dida had begun seeking a final round of funding before its planned IPO, with a capital requirement of $300 million. At the time, it was based on a $1 billion pre-investment valuation and the IPO was in the US.
After completing this round of funding, Dida hopes to have a market capitalization of $3 billion by the time it goes public, the report said.
In September last year, when Dida Chuxing celebrated its fifth anniversary, Dida Chuxing CEO Song Zhongjie said the company has advertising business, value-added business which has achieved profitability. Its carpooling and taxi services can cover 95% of the travel market user needs, Song said.
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