Dear Friends,

As you all remember; last week I underlined how car sharing business is being boomed particularly in Europe. Today, I would like to mention briefly two recent news both are in line with the same business model.

The first news came yesterday from FCA Russia. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) delivers 50 Fiat 500 cars to Delimobil , the car-sharing company operating in Russia, according to the report. The Fiat 500, which is hardly an unknown car in Moscow, is projected to attract interest in operating economy and performance.

Delimobil is the first car-sharing company operating in Russia since 2015. It currently serves over 2.4 million customers with over 7,500 cars in its fleet. The fleet is being car-shared 42,000 times daily. Fiat 500 cars will only be used in Moscow for the time being.  Delimobil is currently operating in 11 cities including Moscow , St. Petersbug , Samara and Grozny.

Current price is 7 rubles per minute. This price becomes 8 rubles per minute during rush evening hours. With today’s exchange rate, you can get the rental price at $ 6.5 per hour roughly.

The second news was published on 27 June 2019 on the website called Auto Futures. According to the news, VW launches car sharing project in Berlin with its electric cars.

The project ,so called WeShare , is supported by digital applications used in mobile phones. The second phase of the project will then be implemented in Prague under the brand name SKODA. The third step will be in Hamburg by 2020.

The project will be carried out in the form of renting electric VW cars from car parks on the basis of free floating. Anyone over the age of 21 with a smart mobile phone and credit card, a minimum of 1 year’ s driving licence and a resident registration in Germany can be a customer.

The cars will be able to be charged from public charging points in Berlin. More charging points have recently been put in place at 70 branches owned by retail food , ompanies such as Lidl and Kaufland. Meanwhile, throughout the 3.8 km long 17. Juni Boulevard , known in Berlin as the protocol road, digitalisation work is underway to make it a smart road for autonomous vehicles by 2021.

The number of car-sharing customers in Germany has increased 14-fold since 2010, say VW statistics. In other words, the number of car-sharing customers that were 180 thousand in 2010 have increased to 2.46 million people this year.

There are new automotive brands and new customers participating in Car Sharing business day by day. In fact, this is not a surprise, The PwC report,that was published in ODD Bulltein in September 2018 already pointed out that by 2040, 30% of the distance in Europe will be driven by shared vehicles.

As the last word, I highly recommend our automotive sector players to give importance to car sharing in order to overcome the contraction in sales.

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