The severe shortage of parking space in Chinese cities will make sharing service the next big investment opportunity in China, said a white paper on the development of parking industry jointly issued by Tsinghua Tongheng Urban Planning and Design Institute and the China Urban Public Transport Association recently.

In recent years, the increasing number of vehicles in China has led to severe shortage of parking space across the country. The white paper said Beijing had a total of 5.48 million vehicles in 2016, with only 1.93 million parking spaces.

According to statistics released by China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country now faces a shortage of over 50 million parking spaces. The norm in richer countries is 1.3 spaces per car. However, in China’s biggest cities, the ratio is 0.8. Smaller cities have just 0.5 spaces per car.

Cities like Beijing and Wuhan have established automated parking systems, but the result has not been very satisfactory. A Beijing resident, Li Cunxi, told Workers’ Daily that automated parking spaces often charge more, and the experience is not very good since it takes much time to get the vehicles. In addition, the system’s maintenance and repair costs are also high.

It was learnt that many enterprises have already invested in parking space-sharing services. According to the white paper, China’s total expenditure on parking stood at 400 billion RMB ($59.14 billion), and investment in the industry added up to 1.7 billion RMB in 2016.

By the end of 2016, more than 2,100 parking lots in Shanghai were providing space-sharing services.

The aim is to increase the utilization of parking spaces through users’ geographical locations. Owners of parking spots can share their spaces on the mobile application when they are empty in order to increase their income and facilitate the task for car owners.

The service enables users to have a clear picture of empty parking spaces close to them, said He Yuefeng, general manager of a parking space sharing company in Shanghai.

In addition, smart services such as automatic sensing and smart payment also facilitate parking space-sharing.

An insider predicted that the industry enjoys huge potentials, given the current less-than-50 percent utilization of parking spaces in the country.

Li Junhui, professor with China University of Political Science and Law, said the service will to some extent relieve the shortage of parking space. But he believes that outdated parking hardware and the present limited number of shared spaces hinder development of the industry.