Who can tear open the ETC market bottleneck period to go higher and further?

In September 2017, the General Office of the Ministry of Communications issued the “Smarter Transportation to Make Travel More Convenient Action Plan (2017-2020)”. Among the many key tasks proposed by the program, the promotion of ETC expansion and application was in the first place. “Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Healthy Development of Expressway Electronic Non-Parking Toll (ETC) System Application” encourages the exploration of ETC to promote its application in parking lots and rental cars. By 2020, the ETC passenger car usage rate will reach 50%.

However, with the heyday, it is often the bottleneck period behind the market boom.

At present, the ETC industry is highly competitive. As the policy dividend disappears, corporate performance declines. In the past year, many financial indicators such as Jin Yi Technology's revenue and net profit have declined in varying degrees. For the first annual report after the listing, Jin Yi Technology explained that the performance decline due to the intensified competition in the ETC industry, the price fell, and the new business is in the incubation period, still need to continue to invest, and has not yet formed a new performance growth point.

In addition, the emerging high-technology group ZTE-chi Technology Co., Ltd. Deputy General Manager Wang Yaodong think ETC "bottleneck" as well as:

1. First of all, there are bottlenecks in technical difficulty, mainly because the service life of the product is limited, the vehicle terminal is constantly awakened, and the life expectancy is shortened. Although the solar charging technology is adopted, the fundamental technical problem cannot be solved.

2, limited by the amount of installation trouble, it is difficult to have a prominent application can be towing to increase the installation amount and give the owner a complete experience. At present, it is mainly focused on the parking lot application without parking, but faced with a complicated parking lot management system, ETCP has been developed for many years and has not been fully popularized. Other application scenarios are currently limited.

3, facing the replacement of other technologies, such as the Hunan highway tolls gradually adopt video + third-party payment methods, which indicates that ETC as a proprietary technology for highway non-stop charging, facing the risk of being replaced by technology.

4. National policy support, ETC application expansion, because it is not a vehicle-related management technology, it is a vehicle-related charging technology, so there is no policy, legal and legal support in the vehicle management.

Mobile payment is coming

In 2018, the ETC industry will usher in a new round of competition, from mobile payments. In the past year, mobile payment warfare has been burned into the public transportation sector. Ali's Alipay, Tencent's WeChat, and UnionPay's cloud flash payment are accessing the nation's subway and bus systems. The entry of mobile giants is bound to be in the field of intelligent transportation. Set off a new big competition. At present, Alipay and WeChat are also promoting the “non-inductive” payment on the expressway to confront the ETC.

On January 17, 2018, a tender notice was issued for the construction of the Sichuan Province Expressway Networked Toll Mobile Payment Platform. This time, following the launch of the mobile phone payment payment system based on license plate recognition mobile phone in Hunan Province in 2017, another provincial highway mobile payment platform construction project was launched.

The main business functions of the mobile payment platform are parking mobile payment (ie, aggregate scan code payment) and non-stop mobile payment (ie, non-inductive payment based on vehicle feature withholding payment), providing mainstream WeChat, Alipay, cloud flash payment + other payment platforms. channel. It also requires the platform to have high scalability and support the access of parking lot mobile payment data.

The highway toll payment scenario originally consisting of cash payment and ETC payment, due to the emergence of mobile payment, the competition between technology and market has become more subtle. So what do we think about mobile payments?

Expert: Mobile payment and ETC complement each other

“We believe that ETC technology has advantages over license plate recognition. On the one hand, it has its own unique advantages in terms of user volume, identification, technical standards, settlement, energy saving and emission reduction.” Ministry of Transport Road Network Chen Hao, Technical Director of the ETC Center of the Monitoring and Emergency Response Center, said.

According to the analysis of China Communications News, mobile payment technology and ETC technology are not your relationship. The combination of the two, complement each other and complement each other, is the development trend of charging technology.

From the perspective of support, ETC can be used nationwide, and Alipay is currently supported by some provinces and cities. From the point of view of convenience, the ETC lane can be directly used without parking, and the Alipay in the manual toll channel also needs to stop and take the card and return the card. Therefore, for non-daily, low-frequency highway owners, take the artificial toll channel to pay with Alipay, you can avoid forgetting the change, and reduce the waiting time.

For owners who often want to run at high speed, it is more convenient to choose ETC, which is universal, automatic deduction, and no direct parking. Previously, Alipay had applied for online ETC, no need to run errands, there will be people to install after the application. Just search for “high-speed vertical and horizontal” in Alipay, click “after ETC” and then click “Apply for card”, all national owners can apply for it.

“Mobile payment is a useful supplement to expressway electronic toll collection (ETC). It meets the differentiated payment needs of car owners for different consumer groups. With the diversification of high-speed payment methods, it can also bring more payment options to car owners. "The relevant person in charge of Hubei Expressway said.

In summary, “fusion” is used to describe ETC and mobile payment relationships more appropriately than “replacement”.

ETC's next focus

In the article "Development and Thinking of ETC", Chen Wei, Technical Director of ETC Center of Road Network Monitoring and Emergency Disposal Center of the Ministry of Transport, said that the next step of ETC's work is:

1. Continue to improve the construction of ETC in the entire user service system. It is expected that ETC users across the country will exceed 100 million.

2. Continue to comply with the requirements of the “13th Five-Year” development plan of the country, consolidate the network foundation of ETC, and increase the non-cash transaction rate to over 50%.

3. Relying on the national network system of ETC, realize the unified opening of toll roads, tolls, value-added tax and electronic invoices. At the end of the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan", electronic charges were the mainstay, and cash charges were supplemented. We will continue to strengthen the foundation of ETC, increase capital investment, and improve various infrastructures of ETC, including the construction of ETC lanes and the construction of service outlets.

4. Strengthen the implementation of policies and regulations, improve the service capabilities of the entire ETC, increase publicity, achieve the coordinated development of ETC, and ultimately achieve the development goals of innovation, coordination, green, openness, and sharing.

Conclusion

The competition is cruel, the road is difficult and difficult. Under the call of the country to vigorously develop smart transportation, the favorable policies, the development of technology and the increase of user demand will inevitably bring more market and more intense competition. Who can tear open the ETC market bottleneck period to go higher and further? Who can make the ETC+ mobile payment combination more beautiful? We will wait and see.