BMW-Daimler to Jointly Invest 1 billion EUR in Five Mobility Companies

As per the plan laid out by the two companies last week, Daimler and BMW will pool together their separate mobility business and ideas into five major new companies: Reach Now to handle multi-modal services, Charge Now to provide electric car charging, Free Now to act as a ride-hailing company, Park Now for parking and Share Now for car sharing.

Combined, the five will need a total of 1 billion EUR to get going as functional entities, and both BMW and Daimler say they will gladly pay.

As per the claims of the two car groups, there are enough customers for the services to support such a decision. The Reach Now service already has 6.7 million users, Charge Now has around 100,000 charge points across 25 countries, Park Now serves 30 million people, Free Now has 21 million customers while Share Now has a fleet of 20,000 vehicles.

“We are creating a leading global game changer. 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,” said in a statement Harald Krüger, BMW chairman of the board.

“We have a clear vision: these five services will merge ever more closely to form a single mobility service portfolio with an all-electric, self-driving fleet of vehicles that charge and park autonomously and interconnect with the other modes of transport,”

To handle the expected increase in operations for the five companies, the joint ventures will hire an estimated 1,000 people over the next several years. 

The joint business of the two is headquartered in Berlin and will be owned and operated evenly by BMW and Daimler.