The new Volkswagen WeShare brand has been launched as their first full-electric car sharing service in Berlin.
WeShare is the new brand that has been launched by Volkswagen to enter the growing car-sharing industry. They will start off with a fleet of 1,500 e-Golf vehicles and plan to use 500 e-up and their first ID.3 vehicles next year. Expansion plans for 2020 have been made with Škoda which will initially move to Prague and be followed by Hamburg. Volkswagen WeShare is a “free-floating” system without rental stations and is operated digitally via an app.
In the early stages, WeShare will cover about 150 sq km in the city centre and beyond the city train ring line. Once the fleet of electric vehicles has been expanded, the area covered by WeShare will be expanded. With the launch of the brand there is an attractive introductory offer where customers will have to pay only 19 cents (Rs 15 approx) per minute. September onwards there will be three categories of fare that will be offered at an average of 29 cents (or Rs 23 approx) per minute.
The requirements for a customer to use the services of WeShare are simple: they need to be 21 years of age and have a registered address for at least a year in Germany. Users will also have to own a smartphone, have a driving license and a credit card. The fleet of electric vehicles will be recharged using the public charging network in Berlin that will include newly created charging points at 70 branches of food retailers. Volkswagen recently got into a partnership with Schwarz Group companies in order to secure the operation of its electric fleet of vehicles and expand the infrastructure of charging points in public places. The number of car-sharing users in Germany has risen 14-fold since 2010. Only about 180,000 people were registered as car-sharing users in 2010 and the number had grown to 2.46 million at the beginning of this year.
Volkswagen We is the digital platform that combines all-digital mobility services and applications. The applications they have successfully launched include We Park, which makes parking even simpler and more convenient. We Experience is the application for personalized recommendations concerning goods or services near to the vehicle. We Deliver makes the user’s boot a delivery point for parcel services. Other services which will be available via Volkswagen We will include over-the-air software updates and functions on-demand for vehicles.
Christian Senger, Volkswagen Board Member for Digital Car & Services, said “With such a consistent, broad offering, we stand out from the competition. We are outstandingly well-positioned to participate in the expanding car sharing market. With WeShare, we have tailored car sharing to meet the needs of users which is easy to use with 100 per cent electric operation on green power,”
Story: Azaman Chothia
