Automakers Daimler AG and BMW AG have agreed to merge their transportation services businesses so that they can expand offerings in ride-hailing apps, car-sharing, parking, and charging electric cars.
The two companies on Wednesday said they aim to become a “leading provider” of new ways to get around cities, where more people will see cars as a service they use when needed.
Those businesses include car-sharing, an area where Stuttgart-based Daimler operates its Car2go service and Munich-headquartered BMW has DriveNow. Customers use a smartphone app to find and unlock cars parked on city streets and use them for short periods when needed.
Part of the deal is Daimler’s “moovel” start-up, which allows users to book and pay for trains, cars, taxis and rental bikes. BMW’s digital parking service enables ticketless, cashless on-street parking and helps uses find spaces in garages.
The combined business would also offer charging services for battery-powered cars. So far, electric cars have only a small market share due to higher cost, limited range and lack of places to charge.
Once electrics become as cheap or cheaper than conventional cars, their market share could expand quickly, and with it the demand for charging.
The 50-50 joint venture requires approval from regulators.
The companies did not say what its name, headquarters, or annual revenue would be, or what executives would run it.
“As pioneers in automotive engineering, we will not leave the task of shaping future urban mobility to others,” Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche said in a statement. “There will be more people than ever before without a car who will still want to be extremely mobile. We want to combine our expertise and experience to develop a unique, sustainable ecosystem for urban mobility.”
Daimler’s Car2Go operates in more than two dozen cities and has more than 3 million registered users with access to 14,000 rental vehicles. At three locations — Stuttgart, Madrid and Amsterdam — the fleets are electric-only.
BMW’s DriveNow has a fleet of 6,000 cars in nine countries.
AI SPLURGE: The four major US tech companies have lost more than US$950 billion in value since releasing earnings and outlooks, while equipment makers were gaining Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that would reach about US$650 billion this year — a flood of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear within them. The spending planned by Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and Microsoft Corp, all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. They would set a high-watermark for capital spending
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Bank of America Corp nearly doubled its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring last year propelled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI). The firm lifted its projection to 8 percent from 4.5 percent on “relentless global demand” for the hardware that Taiwanese companies make, according to a note dated yesterday by analysts including Xiaoqing Pi (皮曉青). Taiwan’s GDP expanded 8.63 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010. The increase “reflects our sustained optimism over Taiwan’s technology driven expansion and is reinforced by several recent developments,” including a more stable currency,
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
RSS