Thousands of shared electric cars seen discarded in Hangzhou

Is “car-sharing” going down like “bike-sharing”?

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Thousands of electric cars are seen unattended on the outskirts of Hangzhou. (Picture: The Paper)

Published: 7:37pm, 25 Mar 2019Updated: 8:59am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Remember those “bike graveyards” that appeared last year after China’s bike sharing bubble burst? It could be happening again — but this time, it’s a “graveyard” for shared cars.

Thousands of unused electric cars were seen parked alongside a river on the outskirts of Hangzhou, according to Chinese media reports. They belong to an electric car rental company named Microcity, who describes itself as a leader in “car sharing”.

(Like “bike sharing”, this is more like rental than actual sharing -- all of the cars are owned by Microcity.)

The company reportedly responded by saying that the cars are still in use, but the Chinese report claimed that when using the app, they couldn’t locate any available cars nearby.

A villager interviewed in a video report said that the company has been paying him more than 30,000 yuan (US$4,469) a year since last July to park the cars on his land. Another villager said to a local newspaper that she has never seen so many cars in her whole life and wanted to get closer, but was stopped from approaching.