BMW CEO Harald Krueger and Daimler chief Dieter Zetsche announced the plan to combine their companies' carsharing schemes on Friday (AFP Photo/ John MACDOUGALL) |
Berlin (AFP) - German auto giants BMW and Daimler said Friday they would invest one billion euros ($1.1 billion) in combining and extending their carsharing schemes DriveNow and Car2Go, in future offering a slew of "mobility services", including for electric cars.
"We
are pooling the strength and expertise of 14 successful brands and investing
more than one billion euros to establish a new player in the fast-growing
market for urban mobility," Dieter Zetsche, chief executive of
Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler said in a statement.
The two
high-end manufacturers will organise their "mobility" businesses
around five joint ventures.
Customers
will be able to book shared cars, hail rides from taxis and chauffeur services,
find and pay for parking spots and electric car charging points and plan
"multimodal" journeys -- pulling in alternatives like public
transport and bike rentals.
All five
strands will follow BMW's naming scheme with titles like Park Now and Charge
Now.
"These
five services will merge ever more closely to form a single mobility service
portfolio," BMW CEO Harald Krueger said.
Still
further in the future, the two firms will offer "an all-electric,
self-driving fleet of vehicles that charge and park autonomously and
interconnect with other modes of transport," he added.
BMW and
Daimler's carsharing and other services like Park Now or MyTaxi today boast a
combined 60 million customers, the companies said.
The new
joint venture will be based in German capital and tech industry hub Berlin, and
create "up to 1,000" jobs worldwide, they added.
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