As it celebrates its fifth anniversary, DriveNow is extending its service to Brussels. The Belgian capital is the tenth European city where the premium car sharing joint venture from BMW Group and Sixt SE will operate. Car sharing without a branch office has been allowed in Brussels since June and the service will offer a range of BMW and MINI models on the proven free-floating car sharing concept.
Speaking on the occasion of DriveNow’s fifth anniversary, Peter Schwarzenbauer, BMW AG management board member responsible for MINI, BMW Motorrad, Rolls-Royce, Aftersales and Mobility Services said, “We are delighted to welcome Brussels as the tenth DriveNow city, a fitting way to celebrate five years of premium car sharing in Europe.
In terms of customers, we already lead the car-sharing market in Germany and our aim is to achieve that across Europe. We are convinced that our premium individual mobility services will be a key factor for success in the future. Of course services will not replace the automotive sector, but they are an important additional area for our business. That’s why we are constantly looking at where we can take DriveNow next.”
Following its launch in Munich in June 2011, DriveNow has constantly expanded its mobility services in Europe and now has more than 600,000 customers. In addition it’s five German locations (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Düsseldorf and Cologne), DriveNow services are also available in London, Vienna, Copenhagen, Stockholm and – as of this month – in Brussels. In Germany, DriveNow records an average of over half a million journeys every month. An average journey is between 8 and 15 kilometres and lasts 20 to 40 minutes.
Electric vehicles were first introduced into the DriveNow fleet in summer 2013 and today, the joint venture offers electric BMW i3 vehicles in almost all of its cities. Twenty percent of the entire fleet is electrically powered and over 150,000 customers had their first electric driving experience thanks to DriveNow, with the company’s electric vehicles having covered more than three million kilometres in total.
The BMW Group believes that car sharing using electric vehicles is a vital step in providing customers with easy access to electric mobility, reducing emissions in cities and helping to attain a higher quality of life in an urban environment.
The ongoing expansion of car sharing is in line with the corporate strategy NUMBER ONE > NEXT, which was presented in March by Harald Krüger, Chairman of the Board of the BMW AG. The strategy considers the further development of customer-oriented mobility services to be a central business area of the future.
With ventures such as DriveNow, ParkNow or ChargeNow, the BMW Group was quick to focus on the increasing significance of digital services, identifying them as an important factor for future success.
This is the context in which the BMW Group introduced ReachNow in Seattle (USA) in April. ReachNow is a further development of the car-sharing concept, offering a chauffeur service, a car-delivery service, car sharing for closed user groups, the renting out of private vehicles and longer-term use of a car. North America is considered the ideal pilot market for the further expansion of urban and sustainable mobility and there are plans to expand the ReachNow service to further cities in the USA.
