The BMW Group and Daimler AG (parent company of Mercedes-Benz) have collaborated to invest more than one billion euros to create a new global player providing sustainable mobility services to customers.
The idea here is to more closely intermesh both companies’ offerings for car-sharing, ride-hailing, parking, charging and multimodal transport, leveraging on their combined total of over 60 million active customers across multiple platforms.
Together, the cooperation comprises five joint ventures: Reach Now, Charge Now, Park Now, Free Now and Share Now. Each business will have its own CEO, and will have both automakers function as shareholders as overseers, although they will not interfere in the companies’ operations.
Now, focusing on each individual business, Reach Now provides direct access to a range of mobility services (public transport, car-sharing, ride-hailing and bike rentals) through a single multimodal platform.
Next up, Charge Now focuses on developing simple, standardised access to public charge points for car manufacturers and fleet operators. A service handled by Digital Charging Solutions GmbH, customers have access to over 100,000 charge points across 25 countries, supported by over 250 charge point operators for cross-border access.
Park Now is a digital parking service, allowing users to reserve parking slots and manage their parking times, enable ticketless entry and exit in public garages, as well as cashless payment of parking fees. In Europe and North America over 30 million customers are already using this service in more than 1,100 cities.
Moving on, Free Now offers a different variety of mobility services including taxis, private chauffeurs with rental vehicles, and electric scooters. It is one of the largest ride-hailing services in Europe and Latin America, with more than 21 million customers and over 250,000 drivers.
Lastly, Share Now is a car-sharing service that allows customers to rent and pay for vehicles at their convenience. More than four million customers in total currently use the service’s fleet of 20,000 vehicles spread across 31 cities around the world.
“Our mobility services have developed a strong customer base and we are now taking the next strategic step. We are pooling the strength and expertise of 14 successful brands and investing more than €1 billion to establish a new player in the fast-growing market for urban mobility,” said Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the board of management of Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars.
We have a clear vision: these five services will merge ever more closely to form a single mobility service portfolio with an all-electric, self-driving fleet of vehicles that charge and park autonomously and interconnect with the other modes of transport,” added Harald Krüger, management board chairman of BMW Group.
The collaboration is strictly limited to mobility services, and both manufacturers will still continue to compete in the premium vehicle business. Ultimately, we want to offer our customers as many options as possible for getting from A to B. In short, this is about driving, riding or being driven,” said Zetsche.
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