FleetNews.co.uk: BMW will launch a four-wheeled rival to the ‘Boris Bike’, when its grab-and-go car hire scheme launches in London by early 2015.
DriveNow, BMW’s joint venture with rental company Sixt, will deploy cars at strategic points on the capital’s streets, reports Car magazine.
The electric i3 will be the star of the London initiative, bulked out by Mini and 1-series cars which underpin similar operations in five German cities which pioneered DriveNow.
The scheme is part of BMW’s drive to become a mobility services provider, happy to hire cars as well as sell them.
In Germany, DriveNow members pay a €29 registration fee allowing them to rent cars off the street paying fees a little cheaper than hiring a London taxi. Drive Now has 350,000 customers and 500,000 rentals per month.
Cars are located, reserved and unlocked with a smartphone app, free to tank up (with a special refuelling card) which qualifies the driver for a free mileage bonus, and with an amnesty from the capital’s highly motivated parking wardens and its congestion charge. Billing is automated.
London has 32 different boroughs providing local government; DriveNow is only expecting to launch with a handful of them, most likely including Haringey and Hackney.
And talks continue with the critical central council, Westminster, ‘to get the scheme into the heart of the city’.
With local authorities increasingly focused on local air quality, BMW’s i3 electric car will be a standard bearer for London’s latest car hire club.
The BMW initiative comes in the wake of another EV car sharing scheme that’s planned for the capital, which will be based along the same lines as those seen in France.
The Bolloré Group successfully launched Autolib – an EV car sharing scheme in Paris – in 2011 and has now won the tender to run Source London.
In Paris, Autolib has 53,000 users and a fleet of more than 2,000 plug-in Bolloré Bluecars, which are used for 14,000 journeys per day and cost less than £4 for half-an-hour’s use.
Similar services are provided by the company in Lyon and Bordeaux, and it is preparing to launch an EV car sharing scheme in Indianapolis.
In London, the company says it intends to expand London’s charging network from around 1,400 to 6,000 in the next three to four years, while introducing a fleet of its Bluecars for the scheme.
