Pedestrians walk past a Maodu billboard in Chongqing. (Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn)
China's used-car market will surpass 2 trillion yuan ($294 billion) in value by 2025, according to an industry expert, who also said the market's future prospects are promising.
Mark Yang, CEO of Chehaoduo Group and founder of Guazi and Maodou, said that artificial intelligence can bring a revolution of increased efficiency to the automobile industry, making his remarks at the SoftBank Corp 2018 shareholders' meeting.
Pointing to used-car platform Guazi, he said that big data and AI is being applied to each link of the used car market, in order to standardize the assessment and pricing of used cars and to develop an intelligent car managing system driven by algorithms, which all contribute to an increased efficiency of four-to-five times in assessment and selling, he said.
"Guazi is the only enterprise in the world to efficiently apply AI technology to the used-car industry," said Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank.
Yang also said Guazi has begun the research and development of a series of intelligent hardware products, including intelligent glasses, a chassis detection robot, diffuse reflectance spectrum detector, visual guidance robot, and intelligent endoscope for increasing used-car assessment and pricing accuracy.
Chehaoduo on Feb 28 announced a new $1.5 billion round of financing from SoftBank Vision Fund.
SoftBank Vision has said that it values how the group takes advantage of big data and AI technology to rebuild an ecosystem within in the industry, and how the company stimulates the growth of China's leading automobile industry.
Having begun as a used-car business and through its three-year development, Chehaoduo now offers a series of services including car financing, insurance, maintenance and rental.
At present it owns over 600 physical stores in China, and subsidiaries Guazi and Maodou have become the significant players in financing for both new and used cars.
Yang has previously said that the group will continue to innovate using big data and AI, which can be applied to every link of the car-consumption industrial chain.
The group will meanwhile open up various businesses in the industry, reconstruct the infrastructure and service chain of the entire automobile industry, and promote the continuous improvement of its industrial service efficiency and user experience.
