Compliance and Internal Control Shortcomings Emerge Frequently, Hellobike's Scale Expansion Faces "Safety Interrogation"

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Source: Caishi Hui

This year’s CCTV “3.15” evening show publicly exposed Hello Chuxing for multiple violations related to its shared electric bicycle business, drawing widespread attention. The violations included unauthorized speed limit removal, dashboard falsification to evade speed regulation, vehicle modifications exceeding standards, illegal license plate switching, and non-compliant vehicle deployment, revealing a neglect of compliance management during business expansion.

The report further pointed out that Hello Chuxing’s offline store management is lacking, vehicle compliance reviews are superficial, and violations such as leasing non-standard vehicles are frequent, which not only threaten road safety and infringe on consumer rights but also disrupt industry order.

From a business perspective, Hello Chuxing rapidly expanded stores through a light-asset franchise model but failed to establish a matching regulatory system, leading to chaos at various locations. Recently, Hello faced controversy over age restrictions in recruitment, which, although rectified, exposed internal management and compliance culture shortcomings. Multiple issues combined highlight systemic flaws in Hello’s compliance operations and internal governance.

Behind the spotlight:

Serious speeding and illegal license plates

CCTV reports show that “Hello Electric Scooter Rental” has over 5,000 stores in more than 100 cities nationwide. Some stores rent out vehicles with illegal decoding, with tested top speeds reaching 75 km/h, exceeding the national mandatory limit of 50 km/h by 25 km/h. To evade regulation, the speedometers still display 25 km/h.

Additionally, Hello Scooter Rental was exposed for illegal licensing and evasion of regulation. According to a provincial recruitment manager in CCTV’s undercover report, relevant parties exploited policy windows before the implementation of new national standards, using vehicle certificates of non-produced vehicles to apply for plates in advance, adopting a “register first, then manufacture” approach. This allowed over-speed vehicles to be registered as “old cars” to bypass the “one vehicle, one pool, one charge, one code” regulation, with claims of assisting franchisees with licensing issues. Some rental vehicles also use 60V 30Ah batteries, exceeding the 48V voltage limit of the new standards.

Source: CCTV Finance

On the day of the incident, Hello Scooter Rental issued an apology statement, saying it had launched a special investigation and self-inspection. Hello stated that it does not directly operate offline stores; store vehicles are purchased and operated by tenants, and the company has not authorized stores to use the Hello brand for rentals, reserving legal rights against involved stores.

Source: Hello Scooter Rental Platform

Founded in 2016, Hello initially started with shared bikes, focusing on third- and fourth-tier cities with a differentiated strategy, maintaining operations amid industry reshuffling. The company gradually expanded into bikes, e-bikes, carpooling, electric scooter rentals, battery swapping, and car rentals, and by 2025, partnered with Ant Group, CATL, and others to develop Robotaxi, building a comprehensive mobility platform.

In capital markets, Hello’s IPO process has been repeatedly delayed: it withdrew its US listing prospectus in 2021; rumors in 2025 suggested a backdoor listing via acquiring Yongan Travel, which was later denied. As of now, Hello has not completed an independent IPO.

Age Discrimination in Recruitment

According to media reports on February 27, a screenshot posted by a netizen from Guangdong showed that in Hello Puhui’s recruitment for “Operations Management,” besides requirements for education, experience, and personal ability, there was also a restriction: “Post-98, capable candidates may be considered if born in 1997.”

This role involves vehicle dispatch, management, distribution, building operational environments, strengthening relationships with local government, maintaining brand image, and managing recruitment, training, and replacement of operations teams.

Regarding the age restriction, the netizen commented: “35 is already inclusive; now they only want capable candidates born in 1997, which means under 30 years old.”

On February 27, a Hello customer service representative responded that inquiries about the recruitment information could be directed to the poster. Guangzhou Human Resources and Social Security hotline 12333 said that recruitment is a company’s autonomous activity, and if there is suspected discrimination, it can be reported to local labor authorities.

On March 3, Hello issued an apology regarding the controversy over recruitment age restrictions. It expressed regret for inappropriate age limit statements in some postings and clarified that using age as a screening criterion was wrong.

Source: Hello Official Website

Hello emphasizes that the company opposes any form of employment discrimination, upholds an open, equal, and diverse hiring philosophy, and values actual ability and job fit. Internal investigations confirmed that the relevant information was posted independently by a business team through direct hiring channels without strict adherence to recruitment review procedures, revealing gaps in the company’s recruitment management.

The company’s large-scale expansion depends on a stable, compliant talent system. The employment discrimination controversy, seemingly a single recruitment issue, actually reflects weakened management control over branches and teams, and lagging internal compliance culture behind rapid business growth.

Electric scooter service outages and autonomous driving accidents

Hello’s safety and compliance issues continue

In the past three months, Hello’s core business lines have repeatedly faced controversy.

In November 2025, many users across the country reported vehicle outages, with remote location tracking and battery level features, promised to members, completely failing. Some users experienced sudden power loss and vehicle lockout during rides, posing serious traffic safety risks. Hello attributed this to the nationwide phase-out of 2G networks, but users pointed out that they were not informed at purchase that vehicles used 2G communication modules, nor warned that functions would fail after network shutdown, infringing on their right to know. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had issued a notice in 2020 encouraging new IoT devices to stop using 2G/3G networks, yet Hello continued to produce vehicles with 2G chips, leading to widespread user protests.

On December 6, 2025, a driverless taxi marked “Hello Autonomous Driving” in Zhuzhou, Hunan, hit two pedestrians, one of whom was dragged under the vehicle. This incident occurred less than half a year after Hello entered autonomous driving and just months into demonstration operations in Zhuzhou. After the accident, local autonomous driving operations were suspended.

From the 3.15 exposure of widespread violations, to recruitment age discrimination, to electric vehicle outages and autonomous driving accidents, Hello has exposed systemic flaws in compliance management and internal governance within just a few months.

It is noteworthy that in response to the 3.15 issues, Hello mainly blamed franchisees and stores, claiming “no direct operation”; regarding recruitment disputes, it explained that the branch team “did not strictly follow review procedures.” This externalized and localized response, while temporarily diverting public attention, cannot hide the structural weaknesses of weakened headquarters control and superficial compliance systems.

Currently, the shared mobility industry is transitioning from rapid growth to refined operations, with tighter policies and increasing consumer safety awareness. For Hello, still exploring the capital market and yet to go public, each compliance failure and safety incident not only damages brand reputation but could also become a significant obstacle to future development. Moving from reactive to proactive governance and embedding compliance into the core of business expansion is an urgent challenge for Hello. (Produced by “Financial Weekly - Caishi Hui”)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not constitute investment advice. Investors operate at their own risk.

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