carmaker Volkswagen wants to his entry into the bicycle leasing company BMS rapidly expand the new business area. “By 2030 we want to have one million bicycles in stock in Europe,” said the head of Volkswagen Financial Services (VWFS), Christian Dahlheim (54), on Tuesday at the sidelines of the auto show IAA Mobility in Munich. In Europe you want to be number one in the market.
VW announced on Monday that it would enter the bicycle leasing business together with one of the world’s largest bicycle manufacturers, Pon Holdings. To this end, the carmaker is taking a stake in the Pon subsidiary Bike Mobility Services (BMS). VWFS will take over 49 percent there, said Dahlheim. VWFS then wants to take over the complete financing of the leasing bikes for the Dutch. This differs little from car leasing, said Dahlheim. “That’s our business.”
Volkswagen and Pon are thus intensifying their partnership in company bike leasing. VWFS has been working with BMS since 2019 and has so far brokered inquiries from its fleet customers for bicycles for their workforce to the Dutch company. According to Dahlheim, there are currently 12,500 bicycles in stock. The aim of the strategic alliance is “to expand together in the growing bicycle and e-bike leasing business in Europe and the USA,” says one Notice from VWFS
.
According to BMS, it is already Europe’s leading bicycle leasing company, operating in six countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and, more recently, the USA. The Pon subsidiary currently makes company bicycles available to over 600,000 employees in 65,000 companies. 90 percent of leased bicycles are e-bikes.
E-bike financing growth market
Because of the trend towards more expensive e-bikes, Dahlheim expects an increasing demand for financing in this area. “We believe that this is an extremely fast-growing business. It has great potential.” Companies in particular increasingly wanted to offer their employees bicycles in addition to company cars. VWFS can now serve this from a single source. “Bike leasing has great potential as an additional profit pool that perfectly complements our current mobility portfolio. In this way, we are systematically expanding our range of services for commercial customers and supporting our long-term growth in the European fleet business,” said Dahlheim.
Volkswagen and Pon have been business partners for many years. The group of billionaire family Pon is Volkswagen’s oldest importer in the Netherlands. As before, they import their cars and even recently lifted together with VW and the financial investor Attestor the billion-dollar takeover of the car rental company Europcar. VWFS boss Dahlheim wants out of the pure landlord make a super app for mobility services
– with a quartet of offers from car sharing, ride hailing, car rental and car subscription – and soon also bicycles, all from a single source.
Gazelle mother Pon as a partner
Pon entered the bicycle business in 2011 and has expanded significantly in recent years. The group now owns numerous well-known brands such as Gazelle, Kalkhoff, Focus, Cannondale, Urban Arrow, Veloretti and Swapfiets. The family company describes itself as the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world, even if the Taiwanese supplier Giant achieved even higher sales. After numerous acquisitions, Pon boss Janus Smalbraak (56) increased sales of Pon Bike 2022 to 2.4 billion euros – and thus overtook the European rival Accell Group (Batavus, Sparta, Babboe), which was only recently taken over by the financial investor KKR .
For the bicycle manufacturer, the intensified partnership with Volkswagen primarily means further growth. “Together with VWFS, which already has a global presence and global financial structure, I believe we have a unique position from which to accelerate the international expansion of bike leasing,” says Smalbraak.
The new bike leasing and bike financing deals are not the only bike activities where the Volkswagen Group is collaborating with Pon. Volkswagen subsidiary Porsche formed two joint ventures with Pon’s venture capital unit Ponooc last yearto jointly develop an e-bike drive
and launching new Porsche e-bikes.