LONDON – German car giants Daimler and BMW will come together to challenge Uber. The rivals announced a new joint €1 billion venture Friday that will offer ride-hailing, parking and other services.
Five Mobility Services on Offer
The companyies will come together to offer five services:
- REACH NOW is a multimodal platform offering a range of mobility services
- CHARGE NOW is an electric vehicle charging network.
- PARK NOW allows reservation and management of on-street or off-street parking slots.
- FREE NOW offers taxis, private chauffeurs and e-scooters.
- SHARE NOW is a car-sharing service
It is ride-hailing service FREE NOW that will be of most interest. A potential challenger to Uber, it is already popular in Europe and Latin America. It currently over 21 million customers and over 250,000 drivers.
Daimler chairman Dieter Zetsche said: “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.”
BMW chairman Harald Krüger described the news as a” game changer.” He explained that “the 60 million customers we already have today will benefit from a seamlessly integrated, sustainable ecosystem of car-sharing, ride-hailing, parking, charging, and multimodal transport services.”