Daimler and BMW Group announced in March that the two rivals would join forces and combine their various mobility services under one equally owned joint venture. The two German auto giants have since confirmed that the mobility joint venture will be headquartered in Berlin.
The company, which hasn't been given an official title, will see various mobility services such as Daimler's Car2Go and BMW Group's DriveNow operations merge into one. The largest portion of the company's mobility business is ride and car sharing, but the joint venture will also be responsible for self-driving cars and their associated services should the technology pan out.
Both Daimler Chairman Dieter Zetsche and BMW Group Chairman Harald Krüger said Berlin is the right place to set up shop, adding that Europe's city centers will help transform the way people move about in the future. The goal is to use both company's efforts to quickly scale up operations around the globe. Daimler and BMW Group have already filed to recognize the joint venture with the European Commission in the European Union.
The company will focus on five key areas including car and ride sharing. On-demand mobility will be a the forefront, which aims to provide individuals with a host of different options, whether its private transport, loaning out a car, or sharing a taxi with other riders.
Parking is another key pillar. Daimler and BMW Group currently offer ParkNow and Parkmobile solutions that offer cashless and ticketless parking for the street and garages. In the future, the joint venture will help make parking more seamless and help drivers save time by reducing the amount of traffic searching for available spots.
Finally, there's the area of charging infrastructure for upcoming electric cars from both firms as well as those of rivals. Daimler and BMW Group plan to provide the simplest access to charging locations and payment to more than 192,000 chargers worldwide. With future technology from the joint venture, both automakers foresee an expansion of electric cars to replace traditional vehicles.
Although Daimler and BMW Group will get along with respect to the services outlined above, the two will remain competitors in their core business of building and selling cars.