Following approval from all antitrust authorities, the BMW Group and Daimler AG will now move forward with their joint mobility company, which is owned in equal parts by the two automotive giants.
The joint venture will focus on “personal freedom of customers in the field of urban mobility,” through a connected and sustainable ecosystem that combines Car Sharing, Ride Hailing, Parking, Charging and Multimodality.
Now that approval has been given, the two automakers will look to close the transaction by January 31, 2019 and present the new mobility company’s next steps in the first quarter of next year.
Once everything is up and running, users can look forward to experiencing Multimodal and on-demand mobility with Moovel and ReachNow, CarSharing with Car2Go and DriveNow, Ride-Hailing with MyTaxi, Chauffeur Prive, Clever Taxi and Beat, Parking with ParkNow and Parkmobile Group, and Charging with ChargeNow and Digital Charging Solutions.
On-demand mobility solutions will include car sharing, bike rentals, taxis and public transport, with a platform that also allows for urban private transport, including providing cars as a service. Meanwhile, Car2Go and DriveNow currently operate 20,000 vehicles in 30 major international cities, and the idea is to help reduce the total number of vehicles in urban areas.
With the ride-hailing services, BMW and Daimler will also look to reduce inner-city traffic by allowing users to share a taxi at the tap of a finger through MyTaxi, Chauffeur Prive, Clever Taxi and Beat. The latter is currently only operating in South America, whereas the other services are available exclusively in Europe.
As for parking and charging services, they will focus mostly on ease of access for European and North American customers.
