Mobility service joint venture set for growth in 2020

17 December 2019

BMW and Daimler are preparing the next phase of their mobility joint venture, having seen it grow steadily since incorporation during February this year.

Almost 90 million people use the mobility services for car-sharing, ride-hailing, parking, charging and multimodal platforms, which are offered in over 1,300 cities worldwide, the companies state. They will now focus on the profitable growth of the venture and double current revenue during the next 12 months.

The services offered by the joint venture will continue to be tailored to customer needs and clustered into three pillars: 1. Free Now. 2. Share Now. 3. Park Now & Charge Now. The introduction of a new umbrella organisation, effective 1 January 2020, will support efficient management of these three pillars.

Organised progress

′As a shareholder, we firmly believe that combining the services into three pillars will strengthen the joint ventures’ impact and focus in a highly competitive, fast-growing environment,’ states Rainer Feurer, senior vice president investment of BMW Group. ′Both shareholders are backing the ′Your Now’ business model and are determined to develop the joint ventures into a leading player in the mobility market.’

′We are setting the course for the Your Now joint ventures to achieve sustainable profitability,’ adds Franz Reiner, CEO of Daimler Mobility AG. ′At the same time, partnerships are increasingly important to success in the marketplace and, in this respect, we are open to further stepping up growth.’

Competitive growth

The free-floating car-sharing provider Share Now, which has emerged from the two services car2go and DriveNow, has registered about one million new customers since the start of the year. With the addition of Paris in January and Budapest in April, the service expanded its European footprint in 2019 to include two major capitals. In the future, the focus will be on cities that promise long-term profitable growth. A review is underway to determine where reorganisation may be needed.

At the same time, the car-sharing business is being systematically further developed, and the successful integration of the two services continues: The Share Now app has been available since November 2019. In Vienna, the new app enables users to reserve and rent car2go and DriveNow vehicles directly for the first time, with more cities to follow.

The offering will be expanded, following a successful pilot phase that tested long-term car-sharing in Milan and Hamburg. Long-term car-sharing offers the option of renting vehicles for up to 14 days.

Hailing details

The venture’s ride-hailing business Free Now will have completed almost 300 million trips in 18 European and Latin American countries by the end of this year. More than 39 million passengers took advantage of the services provided by more than 800,000 affiliated drivers. Growth was also driven in part by the highly successful launch of Beat in Mexico City and Kapten in London, as well as expansion of the Free Now rental service ′Ride’ in Germany, which allows customers to book a rental car with a licensed driver at a fixed rate.