Share Now to increase EV fleet in Europe

11 April 2019 Share Now, the joint mobility operation by Daimler and BMW, aims to increase the number of electric vehicles (EVs) on its European fleet to over 4,000 by the end of the year. The move will see the proportion of electric vehicles it offers to customers grow to 26%. A number of locations will become electric-only, while other territories will feature a mix of electric and internal combustion engine vehicles. ′Our goal is to have a quarter of our fleet electric in Europe by the end of the year,’ said Olivier Reppert, CEO of Share Now. Currently, only 3,200 of the 15,240 cars are fully electric. That is just over 20 per cent of the vehicles in the European Share Now fleet. In addition to Madrid with 850 vehicles, Amsterdam with 350 and Stuttgart with 500, the most recent location, Paris, has been fully committed to electric mobility since January 2019, with a fleet of 400 EVs on the city’s streets. By the summer, almost 800 additional Smart EQs are planned for European fleets. In addition to the four fully electric locations, there are eleven partially electric locations in Europe. BMW will put its i3 EV into action in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Brussels, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Lisbon, London, Milan, Rhineland and Vienna. Within this bloc, the share of the German manufacturer’s small electric offering is therefore increasing. During February this year, 130 of the vehicles were brought in by Share Now, taking the total number to 180. In Hamburg, too, the number of BMW i3s deployed will significantly increase during the course of the year. At the end of 2017, the electric fleet in Hamburg expanded in the first step from 70 to 200 EVs. The first successes of the increased electric share are already evident in the German city, which was the first to bring in a diesel ban, as the number of electric journeys has risen by an average of 17% per month according to the company. Last year, demand for EVs in Share Now’s fleet, which was formed from Daimler’s car2go and BMW’s Drive Now services, was strong. Around 29 million kilometres were covered by the company’s customers in EVs during 2018, with a total of 121 million purely electric kilometres since the two mobility services were created. Currently, Share now says that every fifth trip they provide is made in an electric vehicle. BMW and Daimler announced plans to merge their mobility services last year, and announced the new company details in February. It comprises of five businesses; Reach Now for multimodal services; Charge Now for charging; Free Now for taxi ride-hailing; Park Now for parking and Share Now for car-sharing.