China's Ministries of Transport and of Housing and Urban-Rural Development threw their weight behind the development of car sharing services in August with the release of the Guidelines on Promoting Healthy Development of Small and Mini Passenger Car Renting. But China's 'sharing economy' faces major obstacles and city administrators are struggling to keep up, according to www.ebrun.com, a Beijing-based website focusing on e-commerce development.
It's difficult for car sharing industry to obtain enough license plates in Chinese megacities where car ownership is tightly controlled. Shenzhen Baogang Energy Technology Co., Ltd., for example, only obtained around 900 license plates over the past two months, falling short of hopes to put 4,000 cars on the roads.
Furthermore, China's crowded megacities have limited parking space. Shenzhen Baogang has only managed to secure 15 percent of the 200 parking lots it hoped to acquire for its cars. The third obstacle is the power challenge. New shared cares are mainly electric, charging stations are too sparse to be practical.
Governments should reflect on how to expand pubic resources and guarantee they are allocated reasonably, said associate professor Wang Xue of Shenzhen Vocational and Technology College. “The government should grant more plates, deploy more parking spaces and build more charging stations to meet demand,” she was quoted on the website as saying.
Car sharing companies are doing their own part, reported the site. Wu Bo, general manager of Shenzhen Baogang, pointed out that his company was making contact with all car sharing companies in the city in the hope of setting up a car sharing alliance, “so that companies can share their networked stations, and collect fees in a uniform way, as part of the solution to inadequate space for parking and reducing operating costs,” he said, according to the website.