BMW and Daimler to form a joint venture for mobility services

BMW and Daimler have announced that they will form a new 50:50 joint venture mobility service company. According to the agreement signed, the existing mobility units of the individual companies will be merged into the new company. The yet unnamed company will offer services in the ride sharing, taxi hailing, parking, electric charging and multi-modal domains.

As part of the merger, the Daimler's moovel and BMW's ReachNow on-demand programs will be combined to offer connectivity services including booking and payment services. Car sharing services of Car2Go and DriveNow will be unified as well. They currently operate a fleet of 20,000 vehicles in 31 cities. The taxi-hailing arm of the new venture will include the merger of mytaxi, Chauffeur Prive, Clever Taxi and Beat services. They will offer app-based cab services, share taxis and private hire chauffeur services. Currently they work with 1,40,000 drivers across Europe. Parking services will be handled by ParkNow and Parkmobile Group/Parkmobile LLC, which offer cash less parking spaces along with a closest parking spot locater.

Lastly, the electric charging services will be offered under ChargeNow and Digital Charging Solutions. As of today, both operate a total of 1,43,000 charging points worldwide. This merger will lead to the creation of the world's largest network of public charging stations. While the new company will focus on the aforementioned areas, the individual companies will be rivals in their respective core businesses. The joint venture is subject to examination and is pending approval from the regulatory authorities.