AUTONEWS

BMW and Mercedes vs Uber

Despite the losses accumulated by Uber, the one who analyzes the American transport company does not focus on its history, concentrating only on its future profit potential. And it is behind that even as BMW and Mercedes prepare to run, through five joint ventures, now announced, in which they have invested 1000 million euros.
The objective that unites the traditional BMW Group and Daimler rivals here has to do with the mobility of the future, in a phase where more and more people will inhabit the big cities, whose increasingly chaotic traffic will discourage the purchase of own car, prioritizing the rental by the hour or the minute, through systems such as car-sharing or ride-hailing, activities that Uber already explores. This means that tomorrow's new car buyers will be companies like Uber and no manufacturer wants to stay in their hands without great bargaining power.
Determined not to continue advancing to operators like Uber, which is far from the only one to compete in this market, BMW and Mercedes are committed to jointly creating a worldwide mobility service. To this end they created Free Now (ride-hailing), Share Now (car-sharing), Charge Now, Park Now (parking) and Reach Now (multimodal service).
One of the strengths of this German association is to share and offer services to a joint database that can exceed 60 million customers. And Charge Now already manages 100,000 payloads in 25 countries, while Park Now serves 30 million European and American customers. Free Now has 21 million customers (in Europe and Latin America), and Share Now has a fleet of 20,000 vehicles in 31 cities.
"These five services will allow us to provide a complete and integrated service using electric vehicles, autonomous and able to recharge the batteries and park without driver intervention," says BMW CEO Harald Krüger. For his part, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche says he believes that "by joining the strength and knowledge of 14 brands of both groups," it will be possible to "create a powerful company in the increasingly important business of urban mobility."