The Berlin car-sharing provider Miles takes over the competing offer WeShare from the Volkswagen Group. The company will thus receive another 2,000 fully electric rental cars in Berlin and Hamburg, as both companies announced on Tuesday. A purchase price was not mentioned. As part of the takeover, Miles also ordered more than 10,000 fully electric cars from VW. They should be delivered from 2023.
Miles wants to push ahead with the electrification of its own fleet with the takeover, said Miles boss Oliver Mackprang (34). VW, in turn, wants to focus on expanding its mobility platform, which will also continue to offer Miles vehicles. The basis of the Wolfsburg plans for rental cars, car subscriptions and the like was the Takeover of the French car rental company Europcar. Volkswagen also wants to bundle car sharing offers there – both one and others like Miles. How the car manufacturer’s internal car sharing ambitions will continue is uncertain.
WeShare started 2019 with a rental car service in Berlin that is not tied to any station. Customers can open the fully electric cars via an app and park them anywhere within the operating area. Volkswagen canceled an expansion planned for 2020, officially because of the corona pandemic. Since then, only Hamburg has been added as a further location. At the market launch in spring 2021, the then VW brand boss Ralf Brandstätter (54) warned that WeShare had to get out of the red quickly. You don’t want to pay forever.
The team around CEO Philipp Reth (47) obviously did not succeed. From circles of the finance division Volkswagen Financial Services, which is responsible for the development and expansion of the mobility business at VW, it can be heard that WeShare has not been operating profitably until recently. Reth is now to receive a new position at Volkswagen Financial Services that has not yet been defined in more detail.
Miles rises to number 1
So far, WeShare’s new owner Miles Mobility has been on the road with 9,000 vehicles without fixed stations in eight major cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Potsdam, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Bonn). In addition to cars, vans can also be rented via the platform. According to their own statements, the WeShare takeover will make the Berliners the largest German car sharing provider.
Making money from car parts is considered a difficult endeavor. This is one of the reasons why BMW and Mercedes-Benz sold their joint car-sharing subsidiary Share Now to Stellantis in May. Miles boss Mackprang recently emphasized in an interview with manager magazin, to be operationally in the black
.
Overall, however, the company has so far shown significant deficits in its balance sheets: minus 6.9 million euros for 2019, minus 4.1 million euros for 2020. The consolidation with one of the main competitors – WeShare was the fifth largest provider with its 2000 fleet vehicles in Germany – should now strengthen the market position. Mackprang spoke on Tuesday of “a significant step in the right direction”.