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From Share Now to Stadtmobil: A comparison of the most important car sharing providers

2021-10-08T20:59:16.771Z


Car sharing can hardly be operated profitably, and yet the number of providers in Germany continues to grow. These are the most important players in the market, and so they should be used.


Enlarge image

Difficult business:

Volkswagen has doubts about the perspective of car sharing services like its own "We Share"

Photo: Gerald Matzka / dpa

For

Herbert Diess

(62), the logic behind car sharing is clear: "Today the car is one of the least used economic goods," said the Volkswagen boss recently in an interview shared on LinkedIn. "An hour a day for a relatively expensive investment, that's just not enough." Sharing the car among several users could improve the balance sheet - but not necessarily for the providers: car sharing is "very difficult to get profitable because usage is simply low, and customers are also not willing to pay a price".

A business model for the new, networked world of mobility needs a bundle of several services. Hence Volkswagen's entry into Europcar, because the best starting position would be the car rental companies and "not the car sharing activities".

And yet Volkswagen is also continuing to invest in this business.

The number of providers, 228 according to the Federal Association of Carsharing in Germany, is even growing.

This week, the company Goto Global from Israel announced that it would take over the Berlin electric scooter provider Emmy and, from the beginning of 2022, expand it in the direction of a "Netflix of mobility" that offers large and small electric scooters, e-bikes and even cars with an app.

One app for everything - that is still a distant vision for sharing users today, even if some offers are already integrated on platforms of other companies such as Moovit, Free Now or local transport associations such as Hamburg HVV.

Unusual growth shapes the image of the market, despite the first steps towards consolidation.

Here is an overview of the most important car sharing providers:

Share Now

This is special:

In the inner city districts of the metropolises, the cars of what they say are "the oldest and most important car sharing provider on the market" can usually be found quickly. At least the claim to leadership applies to the free float model, in which the 3.2 million customers can pick up one of the 11,000 cars and park it where it suits them (with some restrictions). The pioneer of this model is the Car2go, founded in 2008, which merged with DriveNow, which was launched a few years later, to form Share Now at the beginning of 2020.

This is how it works:

Registration is free, usually billed to the minute: from 9 cents per minute for Smart Fortwo or Fiat 500, from 34 cents for BMW X1 or 2 Series Convertible.

There are also hourly and daily tariffs or monthly subscriptions for frequent travelers.

In some cities, the vehicles can also be booked through the Free Now travel agent (formerly Mytaxi), and the rental cars from Mercedes-Benz Rent are now also being integrated into the Share Now app.

There are:

Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and nine other European cities

Who is behind it:

Daimler (formerly Car2go) and BMW (formerly Share Now) share the risk.

However, they had to write off high values ​​from the growth phase, and then the Corona crisis struck at the start of the joint offer.

Share Now boss Olivier Reppert now reports strong growth and spreads hope that "the pre-crisis level will be reached" in the coming months.

The switch to purely electric fleets (a good quarter so far), which is required by many cities, is considered a financial risk.

However, the corporations' tolerance of ongoing losses is decreasing.

Works councils are already calling for a separation from car sharing.

Daimler CFO

Harald Wilhelm

signals that the platform must become profitable, it must be able to cope on its own "and we are open to partnerships".

We Share

This is special: the

smaller competitor, which only started in summer 2019 (a good 150,000 registered customers, but at least 2,300 vehicles) is all-electric.

The fleet consists exclusively of VW E-Golf, which are currently being phased out, VW ID.3 and recently also VW ID.4.

We Share promises 100 percent green electricity.

This is how it works:

Similar to Share Now, but with prices per minute of 29 or 34 cents plus one euro per trip.

There is also a tariff with a monthly basic fee of 9.90 and cheaper per-minute prices.

There is this:

Berlin and Hamburg.

The expansion into "large metropolises in Europe, North America and Asia" originally announced for 2020 has not yet been seen.

Who is behind it:

The company is owned by the Volkswagen Group through the Berlin subsidiary Urban Mobility International, which is to combine other mobility services.

Miles

This is special: the

Berlin start-up, founded in 2016, calls itself "the largest independent car sharing provider in Germany" with more than 4,000 vehicles.

Miles also operates a free float model, but with the promise "pay for the ride, not the traffic".

In 2020, sales quadrupled and have allegedly already reached break-even, if only on a monthly basis.

This is how it works:

Instead of minutes, the standard rate bills kilometers driven, with 89 cents plus an entry fee of one euro.

In addition to cars, Miles also offers vans.

There is this:

Berlin / Potsdam, Hamburg and Munich.

In Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg and Bonn, the offer is limited to vans.

Who is behind it:

The founders Alexander Eitner and Florian Haus have won various venture capitalists, including serial founder Lukasz Gadowski and managers of Delivery Hero and Hellofresh.

The current boss, Oliver Mackprang, was previously with Volkswagen's Moia ridesharing service.

Sixt Share

This is special:

the car rental company Sixt was previously involved in Drive Now with BMW, but had to get out before the formation of Share Now - and then founded its own sharing service in 2019. Big advantage: Sixt can make better use of its already huge fleet with a large range of models from eleven different brands thanks to car sharing. The free float model is combined with stationary car sharing and the service of the rental stations. Co-boss Alexander Sixt claims to become a "leading provider of innovative and digital premium mobility". This also includes the robot taxi service announced for 2022 in Munich together with the Intel subsidiary Mobileye.

This is how it works:

In the free float model, Sixt competes with Share Now with prices starting at nine cents per minute.

The cars can also be booked via the Moovit platform.

The Sixt app also contains alternatives such as the small electric scooters from Tier and the Sixt Ride rideshare service.

There is this:

Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam.

In some other cities there is a purely station-based offer from Sixt.

Who is behind it:

Sixt is listed but family-run.

The company is considered the European market leader among car rental companies - and is also cited as a role model by Volkswagen boss Diess.

Quickest

This is special:

Flinkster also sees itself as a "pioneer in car sharing", started in 2009 as a pilot project.

The service has a fleet of 4,500 cars that is hardly larger than Miles, but it is much more widespread, with 2,500 stations mostly at train stations.

This is how it works:

Flinkster is station-based, which means that the cars have to be booked, picked up and parked at a fixed location.

There are several tariffs with hourly prices starting at 1.50 euros for small cars and 1.90 euros for larger cars.

Daily rentals with a kilometer-based fuel flat rate, be it electricity or gasoline, are also possible.

Registration costs nine euros and is free of charge with the Bahncard.

There you have it:

Flinkster names more than 400 German cities, partly through partner offers of small local car sharing providers.

Flinkster customers can also book cars in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Italy.

Who is behind:

Deutsche Bahn uses the car rental from the train station to make the train journey more attractive.

Stadtmobil, Cambio and Co.

This is special:

the stationary providers are the real pioneers of car sharing, some of them have existed since 1992. The number of registered users, at 724,000, is only a third as large as the 2.15 million customers of the freefloat competition.

For this, they usually use the shared cars more intensively and therefore tend to do without their own car entirely.

This is how it works:

As a rule, there are fixed stations, the tariffs are very different.

Some local groups have come together to form regionally defined networks: Stadtmobil with a focus on the southwest (Karlsruhe is the German car sharing capital), Cambio in the north and west, Teilauto in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, Book N Drive in the Rhein-Main- Area.

However, customers in other cities can often also use the offers of the partner networks.

In some cases there are also additional free float offers such as the Cityflitzer in Leipzig or Frankfurt am Main.

There is that:

According to the Federal Association of Carsharing, a total of 855 cities and municipalities in Germany are supplied with it.

Who is behind it:

Many of the initiatives emerged from the environmental movement, some organized as cooperatives or associations.

In many cases, however, the individual local services have given themselves the legal form of GmbH as commercial companies.

ak

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-10-08

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