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New freedoms with mobility services - Copyright green car magazine

Mobility service provider 2018

Car sharing, ride pooling, ride hailing: in the USA and other countries, these terms have long since ceased to be foreign words to most of them. And in Germany, too, these practices are becoming more and more popular. Increasing environmental awareness is probably also a stimulus for thought, as car sharing or ride pooling can save quite a bit of exhaust fumes and emissions.

Modern mobility service providers such as Uber, door2door or MOIA are already offering their services in Germany. Usually it is only the big cities for which this service can be used - but the development now continues. And car manufacturers too have to go with the trend. Automobile manufacturers such as BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen now also have their fingers in the game with their car sharing or ride pooling services.
We present three large mobility service providers who have already advanced their service a long way, not only in Germany.

Uber

The American transport service provider Uber arranges passenger transport via apps. The company was founded in March 2009 as Uber Technologies Inc. and started the service for the first time in the USA in 2011. Initially, Uber offered a chauffeur service: limousines for passenger transport could be ordered for a slightly higher price than the usual taxis. After the company continued to expand, it expanded its services and is also successful in Europe.

Uber offers various services: UberBlack provides luxury vehicles for high demands, i.e. limousines with professional drivers. The service can be booked via the app. All you have to do is enter the pick-up and destination addresses and a suitable driver can be selected. Payment for the service is easy via the app.

UberX hires a transport company to transport registered passengers who have booked the service through the app. Uber acts purely as an intermediary for this service. The trips are carried out by a locally based transport company. In Berlin, for example, Uber works with the transport company ROCVIN Dienst GmbH. Driver and passenger are insured for the duration of the journey and the vehicles are approved as rental cars.

The new UberPool concept is intended to function as a carpooling service and combine several journeys that have the same destination or the same direction of travel. The passengers can share the fare and the drivers themselves can earn more for each passenger. The service is also intended to improve the traffic and parking situation in major cities - initially in Berlin. The service is already very successful in its home country, the USA.

The controversial UberPop service provides private drivers with their own motor vehicle to customers who want to travel. Private individuals do not need a ticket for this. Here, too, the trips are booked via the app.
For the European market, however, Uber now has to plan a different business model. After a Spanish taxi company took action against UberPop, the European Court of Justice ruled last year that the company provides transport services and must be regulated accordingly - Uber's service was legally equated with classic taxi services. The ruling applies to all member states of the EU. There are currently cases at the European Court of Justice that revolve around the UberBlack service. Also because of the legal proceedings, Uber has discontinued the placement of private drivers in Europe and only works with taxi companies or with drivers who have a ticket.

door2door

door2door is a mobility start-up from Germany. Founded in 2012 by Maxim Nohroudi and Tom Kirschbaum, Door2Door has the plan to make a large part of the cars that jostle through the urban areas superfluous. This should work with a shuttle service that brings passengers to their destination and sometimes picks up other passengers on the way - ride sharing. This not only reduces the costs for individual users, but also the distances that are covered by the car. The company offers cities and public transport companies a technology platform that enables them to operate shuttle services on demand in public transport.
At the Consumers Electronic Show in Las Vegas in January 2018, door2door announced its collaboration with the world's largest software manufacturer Microsoft and the automotive supplier ZF Friedrichshafen AG. The aim of the collaboration is to create a solution for autonomous fleets that can be used and coordinated in urban areas.
Since the fleets can bring not only passengers but also goods to their destinations, the roads could be relieved in the long term.

Door2door's “Allygator shuttle” project began as a test phase and can also be found in Berlin. With a free app, users can specify a start and finish point and book the trip. The shuttles currently only run on Fridays from 17.00:01.00 p.m. to 5:XNUMX a.m. in a limited area. Thanks to ridesharing, the trips are extremely cheap: The trip costs only XNUMX cents per kilometer - it would probably only be cheaper on foot or by bike.

The door2door app is available for users to download online or from the respective Play Store free of charge.

ME

The mobility service MOIA is the youngest company in the Volkswagen Group and started in December 2016. The company's goal is to become one of the world's leading mobility providers by 2025. MOIA's range of services includes ride pooling and ride hailing services with a connection to public transport.

In 2017, the young company presented its mission “One Million Cars off the Road” at TechCrunch in Berlin and at the same time presented the specially designed MOIA vehicle, which is fully electric and for Pooling services is optimized. The aim of the mission is to relieve the cities of Europe and the USA by one million vehicles by 2025. The project, including the vehicle, will start in Hamburg for the first time at the end of 2018.

The shuttle-on-demand service is booked - as is usual with other service providers - using a smartphone app: the users enter their location and destination; the MOIA shuttle handles travel requests from people traveling in similar directions. The service is operated by MOIA vehicles and MOIA drivers.

The MOIA vehicle is a fully electric vehicle that can accommodate up to six passengers. A pleasant and spacious interior with free-standing seats and enough space is designed exclusively for ride pooling services. Comfort functions such as dimmable reading lights or USB ports for charging smartphones and WiFi for passengers should make the journey as pleasant as possible. The world's only electric ride pooling with a six-seater was planned, developed and built in cooperation between Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles and Volkswagen Osnabrück in a record time of ten months. A range of over 300 kilometers according to the new WLTP standard and a charging time of just 30 minutes for a charging capacity of 80 percent are groundbreaking for the use of electric vehicles in ride pooling. According to the manufacturer, drivers should be able to drive a full shift on one battery charge.
MOIA has been testing its service in Hanover since October 2017 and has thus been able to further develop individual components in real operation. MOIA plans to start in Hamburg in 200 with around 2018 electric shuttle vehicles. A year later, the vehicle fleet is to be expanded and the range to be extended to other cities.

Addendum

Article from the green car magazine II / 2018

There are new solutions for mobility in the current issue. Subscription under

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Service provider:

https://www.uber.com/de

https://www.door2door.io/

https://www.moia.io/de

N. Hawthorn
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