TuanChe Limited announced the establishment of an electric vehicle (EV) business unit as part of its efforts to enter the EV manufacturing sector by working with a diverse team of EV designers, R&D engineers and manufacturing executives. Guided by market research reports and trending data, the company plans to leverage its strong distribution network across more than 240 cities in China to bridge the gap in digital marketing for its EV brands, while tapping into the potential of its new business model. The lack of a sales network outside the first-tier cities has always been a major hurdle for the new EV brands, as direct selling requires face-to-face communications with their customers.

This has also led to EV makers consider growing their offline network as a core strategy, whereas TuanChe, on contrary already owned strong offline sales network capabilities that will achieve a better breakthrough in this area. As a leading automobile trading and services platform from China, TuanChe had been working on the expansion of its sales network which now covers more than 230 cities throughout the country, organizing over 1,000 offline events each year and attracting tens of millions of customers. More than 350,000 vehicles changed hands on the platform in 2019 prior to the arrival of the pandemic.

Moreover, TuanChe has demonstrated it is well prepared for the sales of renewable energy vehicles. Public data from January to October of 2021 reveals the company saw a nearly fivefold year-on-year increase in EV sales, spanning 78 brands and close to 100 cities. Following the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, TuanChe continued to improve its digital marketing capability, maintaining a rapid 70% growth rate in its online business revenue since the second half of that year, according to its fiscal reports.

Combining offline and online resources, the company is working to build an extensive marketing system for applications both in the public and private sectors.