Likely done in preparation for Daimler merger.
German luxury carmaker BMW is making strides in its efforts to be not just a carmaker, today announcing a buy-out of Sixt’s stake in DriveNow, a ride-sharing service that previously saw BMW and Sixt working together to service something along the lines of 1-million customers throughout Europe.
BMW and DriveNow have been inseparable for several years, with the European ride-sharing service utilising a fleet of BMWs and Minis to provide convenient ownership-alternative mobility services to its customers. With the buy-out of Sixt, BMW will now be free to take the business in whatever direction it wishes, with DriveNow a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BMW Group.
The German company also very recently completed the acquisition of Parkmobile, also another initiative that it initially only had a partial stake in, which provides parking-locator services via an app. Again, this aligns with BMW’s motivations to be more than just a carmaker, but provide an automotive ecosystem that benefits all its customers, be it owners or non-owners, in preparation for the gentle decline of outright vehicle ownership.
Last week, we published a report that BMW and Daimler were looking to merge their ride-sharing divisions, namely DriveNow and Car2Go respectively. Such is the rise of ownership-alternative solutions, the two unlikely partners have seemingly been forced into a union to do battle with other services like Uber and Lyft. The historically-fierce rivals’ intention to band together were first reported by Reuters, who cited a confidential source from one of the involved firms.
With BMW’s outright purchase of DriveNow, we can only imagine that a Daimler-BMW/Car2Go-DriveNow merger would be simplified, as would the subsequent setup of an independent third-party subsidiary, where Daimler and BMW would sit as stakeholders.
Stay tuned to CarShowroom as we bring you more updates as they come.
