Volkswagen has put more detail to part of its plans to spend $4 billion on car-to-cloud architecture. The brand will start up its We Share e-mobility car-sharing service in Berlin in the second quarter of 2019, putting 1,500 e-Golfs in the city, followed by 500 e-up! city cars. In 2020, VW will begin replacing those two models with new products from the I.D. electric range, at the same time as it plans to expand to other cities in Europe and in the U.S. The focus for We Share will be on consumers who live in cities with at least 1 million people and who don't already own cars.
We Share is the first initiative in the planned ecosystem " Volkswagen We" to target non-owners, but the umbrella service folds in digital services already online such as the VW Car-Net assistance and convenience features, and those being trialed such as We Deliver and We Park. In addition to the $1 billion in sales VW expects to accrue due to having an in-house cloud operating system and architecture, the carmaker wants to introduce more drivers to electric driving in a non-committal way and, naturally, introduce them its own I.D. electric cars.
VW will use its Urban Mobility International subsidiary to manage the car sharing concern. The automaker says it has two large digital acquisitions in mind before Christmas this year to continue laying the groundwork, namely in areas of platform connectivity and security. The free-floating car sharing service joins Daimler's Car2Go in Berlin, which has 223,000 cars on Berlin streets, and BMW's DriveNow which has 1,500 in Berlin. VW might go beyond the competitor offerings by adding scooters to the mix, and perhaps expand into other on-demand niches with ride-hailing and carpooling.
The brand has research to show that on-demand services in Europe alone should grow by at least 15 percent per year, and expects We Share to "host" 5 million new customers annually. We're guessing that the 5 million number comes after expansion, since Berlin only has 3.7 million residents, and Car2Go has 3 million members and more than 100 times the cars on the road compared to VW's plans.
Come 2020, VW will swap its standard e-models for the first I.D. hatchback said to be called the Neo, followed by the crossover I.D. Crozz and rebooted I.D. Buzz Microbus. We aren't expected to get the hatchback in the U.S., but the Crozz should arrive in 2020 and the Buzz in 2022. By the time that happens, VW will join a well-populated mobility segment that already includes Daimler's Car2Go, General Motor's Maven, BMW's DriveNow among automakers, plus third-party entries like Getaround, backed in part by Toyota, Zipcar, and Enterprise Carshare.
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We Share is the first initiative in the planned ecosystem " Volkswagen We" to target non-owners, but the umbrella service folds in digital services already online such as the VW Car-Net assistance and convenience features, and those being trialed such as We Deliver and We Park. In addition to the $1 billion in sales VW expects to accrue due to having an in-house cloud operating system and architecture, the carmaker wants to introduce more drivers to electric driving in a non-committal way and, naturally, introduce them its own I.D. electric cars.
VW will use its Urban Mobility International subsidiary to manage the car sharing concern. The automaker says it has two large digital acquisitions in mind before Christmas this year to continue laying the groundwork, namely in areas of platform connectivity and security. The free-floating car sharing service joins Daimler's Car2Go in Berlin, which has 223,000 cars on Berlin streets, and BMW's DriveNow which has 1,500 in Berlin. VW might go beyond the competitor offerings by adding scooters to the mix, and perhaps expand into other on-demand niches with ride-hailing and carpooling.
The brand has research to show that on-demand services in Europe alone should grow by at least 15 percent per year, and expects We Share to "host" 5 million new customers annually. We're guessing that the 5 million number comes after expansion, since Berlin only has 3.7 million residents, and Car2Go has 3 million members and more than 100 times the cars on the road compared to VW's plans.
Come 2020, VW will swap its standard e-models for the first I.D. hatchback said to be called the Neo, followed by the crossover I.D. Crozz and rebooted I.D. Buzz Microbus. We aren't expected to get the hatchback in the U.S., but the Crozz should arrive in 2020 and the Buzz in 2022. By the time that happens, VW will join a well-populated mobility segment that already includes Daimler's Car2Go, General Motor's Maven, BMW's DriveNow among automakers, plus third-party entries like Getaround, backed in part by Toyota, Zipcar, and Enterprise Carshare.
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