Sixt and BMW Launch Joint Car-Sharing Venture

BMW announced this week that they are launching a similar car-sharing service to Daimler’s car2go. DriveNow will be the name, and the vehicle manufacturer has partnered with rental firm Sixt to launch it next month in Berlin and Munich.

The German automaker has already said that a car-sharing service will be one way for its new i brand of cars to launch into the market. However, until this brand becomes available, DriveNow will offer 300 MINI and BMW 1 Series vehicles in Munich and 500 of the cars in Berlin.

The new car-sharing program will work like all the others but with a difference – DriveNow will be the first of its kind to use premium vehicles. The service won’t use fixed pick-up and drop-off locations, while reserving a car doesn’t require an advance booking. Using the cars can be done by activating a chip that BMW and Sixt plan to attach to the driving licenses of registered members.

Registration comes with a one-time €29 fee, but the first 1,000 members will only have to pay €19 and will get 90 minutes of use for free. After paying the registration fee, customers will pay about €0.25 per minute – which includes fuel, parking fees, and tax. For example, the maximum hourly charge is €14.90.

The launch of DriveNow in Berlin and Munich is just a test of the service to see how well it does. If it’s successful, BMW plans to expand the service worldwide with no less than 1 million subscribers by 2020. The company also plans to make it a core asset.