BMW Group and Hamburg join forces to provide city-wide electro-mobility
11 May 2017
11 May 2017
The German city of Hamburg and the BMW Group signed a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday to form a strategic partnership to develop urban mobility in the city. It aims to expand the Hamburg based fleet of electrified DriveNow vehicles to around 550 by 2019. Plans call for around 400 pure electric vehicles and about 150 plug-in hybrids. At the same time, Hamburg intends to provide a total of 1,150 charging points in stages by 2019 and will become the first city in Germany to offer a significant number of parking spaces for car-sharing and electric vehicles.
′With Hamburg as our strong partner, we want to continue expanding our highly-attractive options for sustainable individual mobility in the city and help improve environmental conditions in urban areas,’ explained Peter Schwarzenbauer, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG. ′DriveNow is already a genuine success story – in Hamburg and in other cities. I firmly believe this is an important step to win over even more users for electrified car-sharing,’ he added.
′Hamburg is preparing for future mobility with state-of-the-art technologies. We want to make traffic cleaner, quieter and more efficient, thereby improving quality of life in the city. To achieve this, we are developing intelligent traffic systems and promoting electro-mobility all across the city – for example, by expanding charging infrastructure. This expansion programme will create the conditions needed to operate one of the largest electrified car-sharing fleets. This cooperation with the BMW Group will play a major role in systematically expanding e-car-sharing services. Integrated e-car-sharing, combined with classic public transport solutions, will ensure that future urban passenger transport offers greater flexibility and capacity, even at peak times,’ said Olaf Scholz, First Mayor of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.
Step-by-step implementation will get underway in the summer of this year to ensure that the availability of electrified vehicles and charging points develop in tandem. ′By the end of this year, we will have 200 BMW i3s available in the Hamburg fleet, almost three times as many as the 70 we currently have,’ said DriveNow Managing Director Sebastian Hofelich. ′For us and our partners, this initiative is important to learn how and under what conditions rapid electrification is possible,’ he added.
Hamburg and the BMW Group aim for this strategic partnership to leverage electro-mobility all across the city and lower overall vehicle emissions. At the same time, additional car-sharing options will ease inner-city traffic by optimising vehicle utilisation and reducing the number of miles driven by individual passenger cars.
The joint initiative announcement comes quickly after Germany’s transport minister Alexander Dobrindt officially launched the country’s ′charging infrastructure’ programme by approving funding for 595 charging points in and around Hamburg. Hamburg has also recently rejected the introduction of a sweeping ban on diesel vehicles but a new air pollution plan proposes that access for older diesel vehicles is blocked on two main roads.
Photograph courtesy of BMW Group