Daimler’s car-sharing service was used 24 million times last year.
The car-sharing provider Car2go from the DaimlerGroup has seen strong growth in customer numbers over the past year. With 2.97 million customers 30 percent more users were registered with the company than the year before, said Car2go on Thursday in Stuttgart.
As a result, the company remains the world leader in non-station-based carsharing companies. “We have grown in all areas – number of customers, rental period and vehicle utilization – and in all the regions in which we are active,” said Car2go boss Olivier Reppert.
Last year was 24 million times Mercedes Benz or Smart rented by Car2go. The use of the 14 000 vehicles has thus increased by a total of about 38 percent. The cities with the most registered customers are the Chinese megacity Chongqing, Berlin and Madrid.
Daimler has been on the market since 2008 with its car sharing offer. Last but not all were profitable, but only in some cities. Daimler Chief Financial Officer Bodo Uebber had postponed reaching breakeven about a year ago to invest in even more growth.
Uber, Didi and the Germans: billions wanted to ride
The Stuttgart have other mobility apps and platforms such as Mytaxi or Moovel in the quiver and holdings such as Flixbus. Most recently, the Dax Group had bought the French car service broker Chauffeur Privé.
The rumors persist in the industry about a merger with the competitor DriveNow, the Daimler rival BMW and the car rental company Sixt belongs. DriveNow is much smaller, but prides itself on making profits.
The user curve also shows up at DriveNow: On Wednesday, the Munich residents announced that they had increased the number of customers by a quarter to 1.025 million. DriveNow has 6000 cars in the fleet and so far is not station bound.