BMW’s Launching an Uber Competitor in Seattle

“The earlier we know about it, the earlier we can inform people who are working these products in the long-term,” Broesamle says. And the earlier they can work on positioning BMW to survive into the next century, when urban car ownership should be less important.

“Less” is the operative word there. There has been much hemming and hawing about the death of the personal vehicle—fewer Americans are getting drivers licenses, and some in the densest cities are forgoing car ownership altogether. But for BMW, ReachNow is less about replacing all personal vehicles than allowing families to pare down their collections. Indeed, the company says it has had most success with urban families, who increasingly lean on ride-hailing services and transportation alternatives when their one car is busy. (ReachNow says it picked Seattle for its ride-hail rollout because the populace is so tech-friendly. It tested the service in beta last summer.)

But what sorts of supplementary services does a busy single-car family need? Through ReachNow, the company hopes find data that will help it parse nuanced answers to those questions.

For that reason, this new ReachNow service competes with Uber and Lyft’s luxury services instead of their cheaper and shared offerings. The drivers are professional employees of third-party transportation companies. Users can schedule rides a week in advance, to be sure they’ll make that flight. Even the settings are configured for the amenity-sensitive consumer—users can choose, from within the app, what radio station they’d like their driver to tune into, what temperature they’d like their car to be, and whether they’d like to be in “quiet time” mode. No talking, please—I’ve got to take this call. The cost of the service—$2.40 per mile, plus 40 cents per minute—is competitive with Uber’s black car service.

Of course, that means BMW will have to go up against those well-established ride-hailers, with their own armies of programmers for whom app building and user experience is the core competency. BMW’s ReachNow app has, thus far, received middling reviews. (So have other automakers’ “mobility” apps.)

Still, BMW’s already thinking about how to expand this service beyond Seattle, and pondering ways to cater to cities that have different transportation needs. The Emerald City may differ from Brooklyn, which may differ from Bonn. But if there’s anything to find, and any business strategies to develop, ReachNow’s integrated in-house app should be just the start. One thing that’s not quite on BMW’s list yet, says Broesamle: a bike share service. The German car guys are still car guys. At least for now.

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