Dusseldorf Volkswagen is selling its car-sharing provider Weshare. The Wolfsburg-based group announced this on Tuesday. The buyer is the manufacturer-independent car sharing company Miles Mobility. Neither side gave any financial details.
Volkswagen should not have achieved an excessively high selling price with its sharing provider. The VW subsidiary is in the red. With the sale, the VW group follows Mercedes and BMW, who had already sold their car-sharing provider Share Now to the Stellantis group in the spring.
Volkswagen founded Weshare three years ago, entering the car sharing business much later than many other car manufacturers. From the beginning, Weshare only offered electric models from Volkswagen and no combustion vehicles. This special position in the range should compensate for the late market entry.
But even with this strategy, Volkswagen has not managed to turn its own car-sharing service into an economically successful company. “Weshare doesn’t make any money today,” said Christian Dahlheim, CEO of VW Financial Services (VWFS), the group’s finance and leasing division, in which Volkswagen’s mobility services are also bundled. And he adds: “You’re more profitable with mixed fleets, we’ve learned that.”
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After the founding of Weshare in 2019, the group also wanted to be represented with the offer in European capitals such as Prague, Budapest, Madrid and Paris. But these expansion goals were canceled early on.
Today, Weshare is only represented in the two largest German cities with a total of 2,000 all-electric vehicles in the car-sharing business: Berlin was the founding location, Hamburg was the only expansion that came later.
The buyer of Weshare is the Berlin car-sharing provider Miles Mobility, which was founded as a start-up six years ago. Along with Share Now and Sixt, the Berliners are among the three largest car sharing providers in Germany. Miles has recently started offering carsharing not only in eight German cities, but also in the Belgian cities of Brussels and Ghent. With the cars from Weshare, Miles will significantly expand the range of electric vehicles.
Miles Mobility has reached profitability
With Miles Mobility as the new owner, the chances of profitable operation of the Weshare fleet are better. “We have been profitable since 2021,” said Miles Mobility CEO Oliver Mackprang in front of journalists. His company continues to focus on the German market. Miles will only expand abroad cautiously. “Volkswagen no longer has to bear the expansion costs for Weshare itself and is shifting this task to Miles Mobility,” added Wolfsburg group circles.
Of the approximately 9,000 Miles vehicles, 70 percent come from the VW Group. The two companies want to continue working closely together in the future. The VW Group announced that it intends to provide the carsharing provider with more than 10,000 all-electric vehicles from next year. Miles will purchase e-cars from Volkswagen, Audi and Seat/Cupra.
>> Read here, what big plans Volkswagen once had with Weshare
Through its new subsidiary Europcar, Volkswagen is also working on an app offering in which all of the Group’s mobility offerings, such as rental cars, car sharing and car subscriptions, will be offered together in the future. VWFS CEO Dahlheim announced that Miles will also be represented in this app with the previous Weshare fleet.
With the joint mobility offer Free Now, Mercedes and BMW are pursuing a similar strategy.
According to Dahlheim, however, Volkswagen has no plans to participate in Miles Mobility. “You don’t have to be involved in every partner,” said the VWFS boss. According to his statements, there is no change in strategy behind the sale of Weshare. Volkswagen has emphasized since 2020 that the group does not have to take on every task in the field of mobility services itself. Cooperation with various partners is particularly useful in the area of car sharing.
Various partners for car sharing
In the meantime, Volkswagen does not want to rule out completely its own offers in the area of car sharing. Despite the sale of Weshare, the group can certainly act as an independent provider in this area, according to Dahlheim. “We would then do that with Europcar. However, such a plan is not a priority at the moment,” he said.
In the future, a model could emerge in which VW offers car sharing in some cities through its own subsidiary Europcar, in other cities through partners such as Miles Mobility. There is no real difference for the customer because the offer is presented uniformly everywhere via the app.
More: Farewell to car sharing – Why BMW and Mercedes sell Share Now to Stellantis