"Don't listen to these people's nonsense! People who think buying a house is too expensive and are willing to live in an RV are all nonsense!" Han Lu, a senior car critic, has publicly questioned young people who "live in cars and don't rent houses". Indeed, when you search for "RV" on platforms such as Tiktok and xiaohongshu, you can see many young people with big brain holes. They are avant-garde and willing to take the RV as their "home". These people also have a common characteristic: they are free and unrestrained, are not troubled by the rent, and will not feel pain for the crowded public transport commuting. They can leave on weekends
It seems that this is indeed the life most young people dream of.
However, sina finance and economics communicated with many employees of car enterprises and people who have really lived in RV and found that young people who "don't rent a house, only live in RV" seem to live only on the Internet. To put it more bluntly, they mostly live for traffic.
On the commercial side, Zhou Yong, general manager of RV home, and Liu Yajun, COO of SAIC Maxus RV Technology Co., Ltd., told sina finance that the people who don't rent a house or buy a house and drive a RV to work are really just an example. Although there are various bloggers in many content communities and short video platforms who say they are living with RV, it is difficult to achieve in practice and has little impact on RV sales, let alone the help of commercialization.
"RV life, there are too many problems"
Wenjia, a post-80s generation, bought her own RV and enjoyed the joy of transforming it. It's not that she hasn't considered living in the RV for a long time, but the reality is that after "mixing" in the RV circle for a long time, the people around her are "just looking but not buying", and everyone is just chatting.
Because there are many problems. The first is the problem of daily water. The parking lots in first tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen do not have supporting facilities to add water. It is unrealistic to pump hundreds of liters of water from public toilets every day.
The second problem is electricity. Although the RV will be covered with solar panels, this is only suitable for tourists. As long as you drive on the road for a few hours every day, you can meet the power demand of the day.
"It will be a big problem for the company to park the car downstairs for another four hours every day." Wenjia told sina finance.
Sewage discharge is also a big problem. Bathing water, toilet dirt and cooking all need sewage. If you live in a parking lot, sewage must become a big problem.
Ideally, all the above problems can be solved, and there may be a problem of not finding parking lots in big cities. At present, the vast majority of parking lots in first tier cities are not allowed to stay overnight, or even RV entry.
Wen Jia said that in previous years, most people like to play abroad, but in the past three years, affected by the COVID-19, many people choose to buy RV to play in China, which has increased the number of players in the RV circle. However, the following is that the management is not implemented in place. Many people park their RV in the parking lot and "live into a family", occupy several parking spaces to dry clothes, cook, and pay no attention to hygiene, which directly leads to the fact that many parking lots, even the parking lots in the scenic spot, are not allowed to enter.
If you can't find a parking lot that can stay overnight, you can only park on the roadside. No matter how good the sound insulation effect of RV is, it won't be comparable to housing. Parking lots, roadsides and RV bases belong to public areas rather than private spaces. Driving or chatting will affect sleep.
"The last day's shift has been very hard. You still need to consider the problems of water, electricity and oil after work. You will be more tired." Wenjia said that all the people she knew who bought houses and cars were for fun, to experience different scenery, and definitely not to save money.
Gao Yuna had been engaged in the financial industry in Guangdong. After working for more than ten years, she felt that she had entered the bottleneck period of her career and felt tired. Then she chose to enter the RV market, so in February 2022, she came to a RV camp in Beijing to sell RV.
She calculated the account. If the owner wants to have complete RV supporting facilities, he can choose to live in the RV camp, but the price is more expensive than renting a house. Taking Beijing as an example, the RV camp in the Fourth Ring Road needs about 8000 yuan a month. The price in more remote areas such as Changping, Huairou and Shunyi is more than 20000 yuan a year. Moreover, almost all RV camps are in remote places, and commute to and from work every day.
A report from an RV brand obtained by Sina Finance and economics shows that more than 65% of RV consumers are high-income groups, rather than young people who choose to live in RV instead of paying rent. Outdoor sports enthusiasts and field workers are also one of the consumer groups of RV. Obviously, young people who are unwilling to rent and buy houses are not the driving force of the RV market.
RV commercialization in spring
Zhou Yong, general manager of RV home, and Liu Yajun, COO of SAIC Maxus RV Technology Co., Ltd., told sina finance that the people who do not rent a house or buy a house and drive a RV to work are really just an example. Although there are various bloggers in many content communities and short video platforms who say they are living with RV, it is difficult to achieve in practice. More people buy RV for family travel, personal outdoor travel, traveling together, etc. young people buy RV to live, which actually has little impact on RV sales, let alone the help of commercialization.
In fact, due to its mobile nature and residential function, RV is naturally linked to the tourism market. Especially since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, cross-border tourism has almost stopped. Affected by the spread of the epidemic, long-distance tourism is intermittent and unable to stabilize the supply.
In this context, short distance travel has become the mainstream content of tourism consumption. At the end of 2021, the inventory of tourism consumption behavior in 2021 released by many online tourism platforms showed that under the background of the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, more tourists chose short-distance travel and peripheral travel.
"In the past two years, we have sold more short-distance travel and personalized tourism products, such as outdoor camping, beach music festival, shooting stars in the desert, etc., mainly to meet the needs of current customers." A tourism practitioner told sina finance.
Tuniu tourism network data show that a small number of camping tourism is loved by more and more users because of its good privacy, and has gradually become a new trend. According to the data, the popular camping routes of tuniu tourism network in 2021 are mainly concentrated in scenic spots such as southwest and northwest, especially RV, desert and star camping.
This was originally thought to be an opportunity for the outbreak of niche RV. In particular, domestic RV brands with price advantages will benefit from the outbreak of short-distance travel demand and increase at the sales end.
According to the data released by China Automobile Circulation Association, the annual sales volume of domestic self-propelled RV reached 12600 in 2021, with a year-on-year increase of 43.2%, and the average monthly sales volume exceeded 1000; 3543 caravans were traded.
In the first quarter of 2022, China's RV market sold 2425 vehicles in total, with a year-on-year increase of 17%, and the sales volume was the highest in the same period of nearly five years.
A report obtained by Sina Finance and economics shows that domestic RV brands have benefited a lot from this round of growth by tapping the needs of subdivided groups and high cost performance. In March as of the end of the statistics, the number of RV insurance in China was 782, with SAIC Maxus accounting for 13%, ranking first.
After the green light of relevant management policies, RV sales are expected to enter the upward channel. Starting from April 1 this year, the newly revised provisions on the application and use of motor vehicle driver's license issued by the Ministry of public security will be implemented, and the driver's license will add a new permitted driving model (C6) of light towing Trailer. In other words, there are driving specifications for light trailer RV on the road. This provides a pass for many RV enthusiasts to travel on the road.
Even so, the growth of other markets driven by RV is still limited, especially in addition to sales, the camping tourism market, which is most closely combined with RV, is still small.
According to the statistics of AI media consulting, the market scale of camping camps reached 29.9 billion yuan in 2021, with a year-on-year growth rate of 78%. It is expected that the market scale of domestic camping camps will be 35.46 billion yuan in 2022. Although this growth is not entirely due to the growth of RV market, there is no doubt that the increase of RV sales has promoted the development of "camping" culture and increased the consumption of camping peripheral equipment such as tents, folding tables and chairs.
"RV and camping can't be generalized. At least I often go to the place where I go camping. I can see few RV. Some RV are also purchased by the camping operator for rental as characteristic accommodation." Mr. Zhang, a camping enthusiast familiar with the RV market, told sina finance.
He also pointed out that the modification of RV and the sales of on-board equipment are still some additional income brought by RV. Liu Ya of SAIC Maxus also told sina finance that one of the special aspects of RV culture is that car owners prefer to share some good equipment, such as the frying pan used on the RV.
However, because the sales volume of China's RV market is limited in one year and the overall ownership is not large, the income brought by this part is not high. A saloon car salesman told sina finance that some car owners will really spend more on refitting than buying an saloon car, but this is not a one-time expenditure, but accompanied by the whole life cycle of the saloon car.
The RV market entered the rising channel, and the policy turned on the green light, which also led to the emergence of some gray income. The above-mentioned sales told Sina Finance and economics that after the driver's license added the permitted driving model (C6) of light traction trailer, many people used qualified vehicles as scalpers to help license the trailer and charge fees, which gave birth to the gray industry.