With last week’s announcement, Daimler Car2Go has joined Ford Chariot, GM Maven, BMW ShareNow as the latest Automotive OEM forced to reconsider its shared mobility strategy. Overall, the automotive industry is acknowledging that continued financial losses with shared mobility fleets are not sustainable.
These industry giants have found that using in-house developed software may work to enable launching a service but is sometimes not sufficient to create an optimized and automated high-yield mobility service. For some of these companies, an inefficient platform meant a subpar service in every city. For other companies, the best performing cities have been compensating for inefficiencies in other cities.
“We know that in order to ensure the future of our business in North America, we have to think differently about where and how we operate,” Car2go blog
The need for shared mobility services has not diminished. What has increased are the expectations for the next generation of shared mobility services and technology. These services should support a high-utilization experience that comes with using fleets for multiple business models (free-floating, station-based carsharing, and ridesharing). Highly efficient operations based on automated fleet servicing is also required to bring down the cost of maintaining fleets to levels that support achieving profitability. Shared fleets need to deliver a tailored customer experience, with dynamic pricing and packaging that’s unique to specific groups of individuals.
Now is the time to remain invested shared mobility and to prepare for $9 trillion market today— while the winners and losers have yet to be decided. And do so in a manner where you’re able to run a profitable business now, while preparing for the best position to capitalize on the future market expansion.
Author: Fran Thorpe, Director of Product Marketing, Ridecell