D The VW subsidiary Moia, responsible for mobility services, will be launching its shuttle service in Hamburg in the first months of 2019. At the beginning, a double-digit number of electric minibuses will chauffeur passengers through the city, announced a spokesman. This number should then rise soon after the official start to 200, by the end of 2020, Moia will use up to 500 vehicles.
In April, the Hanseatic city approved the operation of Volkswagen. Specially developed, all-electric minibuses based on the Crafter model are used for this purpose – passengers with similar goals share the vehicle.
Originally, Moia had requested the use of 1000 vehicles. The Moia spokesman said that during the first two years there will be an accompanying research on whether the new service will affect the taxi offer or public transport. Especially the
The taxi industry has strong reservations about Moia. There have been “some noise” there, concedes company boss Olaf Harms. “It’s a pity that it was so sharpened.”
The competition does not sleep
From 2021 Moia could increase the number of buses used by another 500. “The market is at the very beginning – and it will be huge,” says Harms.
But many other providers are now in the industry. The classic carmakers need to equip themselves for battle with major transportation service platforms About , The Americans have demonstrated how it could be done, but massively with authorities and taxi companies.
Of course, Google is also involved: The sister company Waymo had recently announced that it would expand its fleet of self-driving cars with up to 62,000 minivans from Chrysler. Waymo is in the process of launching a robot taxi service for residents of a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.
VW is under pressure
BMW and Mercedes in turn put their car sharing services DriveNow and Car2Go together – not to be downgraded by companies like Uber or Didi Chuxing to pure suppliers, as industry experts Stefan Bratzel explained. “We’re experiencing a paradigm shift in the industry – buying and owning a car is just an option.”
So also Ford does not want to miss the mobility turn, together with the Cologne traffic enterprises. Transit buses should roll mainly in the evenings and on weekends, the passengers can order them via App. Ford is currently testing this in London. Even smaller providers such as Clevershuttle are at the start. VW is therefore under pressure.